


I Heart You

by Self-Inflicted Insanity (Marvelite5Ever)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alfred is annoying, Alfred thinks he has a clone, Alfred walks into a door, Angst, Antonio is a Good Person, Arthur is an insomniac, Arthur sees the dead, Fluff, Francis is an angel, Francis is dead, Germans follow the rules, Gilbert does a lot of panicking, Gilbert gets pneumonia, Gilbert is Awesome, Gilbert is German, Gilbert is a university student, Gilbert likes Ludwiggazing, Gilbert needs to calm down, Gilbert thinks stargazing is boring, Gilbert wins at seduction, Gilbert wins everything, Heracles just wants to sleep, I hate how tags can't be reordered, Lovino is a lawyer, Lovino really hates his watch, Ludwig is a doctor, Ludwig is a university student, Ludwig is also German, Ludwig like stargazing, Ludwig needs to learn how to smile, M/M, Matthew apologizes, Matthew walks into a door, Mercurial!Gilbert, Mysterious!Gilbert, Neurotic!Ludwig, Pedantic!Ludwig, So many AUs, Tagging is Annoying, Why Did I Write This?, a little bit, and apologizes to it, and curses at it, and do not jaywalk, and kicks it, and yelling at people, because, different AUs for the same prompt, everyone blame Francis, he likes arguing with people, in skimpy underwear, lawnmowers are loud, needlessly elaborate backstories, preferably with Sadik, shut up that's totally a thing, teeth-rotting fluff, the apartment building burns down, there's definitely some angst in these, who is intimidatingly attractive, who smiles a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-05-17 04:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 46,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5854201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marvelite5Ever/pseuds/Self-Inflicted%20Insanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various Hetalia pairing AUs. </p>
<p>1. FrUK: Arthur can't sleep. The apartment building burns down. Arthur and Alfred are not spies. Francis is not an angel. And Arthur definitely does NOT have a crush on him.<br/>2. GerPru: Gilbert gets pneumonia. It sucks. But at least the nurse is hot.<br/>3. AmeCan: Alfred gets mad at a door, and Matthew apologizes.<br/>4. GerPru: Gilbert and Ludwig did not meet while fighting off zombie vampires with cleaning supplies. They met while refusing to cross the street.<br/>5. FrUK: Arthur and Francis are in love, but Francis is dead. Somehow things work out.<br/>6. GerPru: Ludwig likes to stargaze. Gilbert likes to watch Ludwig stargaze.<br/>7. Spamano: Lovino's date doesn't show up. Antonio thinks that's a shame. Lovino hates his very expensive watch.<br/>8. GerPru: Gilbert is panicking about an online exam, and an intimidatingly attractive man is sitting in front of what is literally the only electrical outlet into the entire cafe.<br/>9. TurGre: Heracles is tired of dancing around the attraction between him and Sadik.<br/>10 and 11. GerPru: Gilbert is the asshole who mows his lawn at 8am. Ludwig will not abide by such behavior. (Two different stories for the same prompt.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. FrUK: Fire Alarm at 3am AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** Someone needs to write a ‘the fire alarm went off at 3 am and now the cute guy from the flat next door is standing next to me in his underwear’ AU

* * *

**Well, The Apartment Building Is Burning Down**

* * *

It was two in the morning, and Arthur couldn't sleep. 

He'd been lying in bed for four hours, staring up at the ceiling swathed in darkness, willing his vision to start blurring. 

But no, his eyesight was clear. Or as clear as his eyesight could be in the dark, pupils completely dilated. In fact, he couldn't keep his eyelids closed. He tried, and they just popped right back open, gaze attaching to the ceiling. 

He could hear his younger brother Alfred snoring in the twin bed on the opposite side of the room—blimey, everything about that kid was loud, even when he was asleep, and there was no way to get away from Alfred's snoring because they lived in a one-bedroom apartment, and Arthur got a crank in his neck every time he'd tried sleeping on the couch. 

But blaming his inability to sleep on Alfred's snoring was unfair, because Arthur had had trouble sleeping for as long as he could remember. He might have still been able to blame everything on Alfred, since they'd shared a room as kids, but when Arthur had moved to Great Britain to earn his degree there, he'd _still_ had trouble sleeping, and his roommate hadn't ever snored. 

Why Arthur even tried to get to bed at ten, he had no idea. Maybe to set a good impression for Alfred, who needed his sleep if he was going to get through college. Or maybe because he knew Alfred would be waking him up at six in the morning, no matter what time he'd finally fallen asleep, to go jogging with him. 

“How _else_ are we going to retain our awesome figures with all the junk food and poison we eat?” had been Alfred's rebuttal to Arthur's complaints. “Especially since you don't get enough sleep, and people who are sleep-deprived are more likely to get fat!” 

Arthur hadn't stopped complaining, but he never refused to go on their morning jog. It was tradition, now, and Arthur maybe actually kind of liked it, even if he'd never admit it to Alfred. Though he had a hunch Alfred already knew—the kid wasn't as thick-headed as he led everyone to believe. 

“Just take some sleep pills or somethin',” Alfred had advised him several times, but Arthur always argued that he didn't want to become reliant on drugs to help him sleep—not after his period of alcoholism a couple years ago when he'd relied on the liquor to do just that. 

Help him sleep, help him put his restless thoughts out of his mind. 

“Well maybe if you didn't always worry so much—” Alfred would say, and Arthur would vehemently deny. 

He didn't _worry_. He just couldn't stop thinking, sometimes. And when one thinks too much, sometimes one ends up thinking worry-inducing thoughts, because one's run out of unworrisome ones. 

He thought about how they were going to pay for Alfred's college education without falling into debt. He thought about his job and all the incompetent people he had to deal with. He thought about his pathetic excuse of a social life and his most recent dating catastrophe. He thought about how lucky he was to have gotten a job in the theater department at the university his brother attends. He thought about what they were going to have for breakfast the next morning and how much he hated those bloody donuts that Alfred always bought. 

He thought about a lot of things. 

It was the last series of thoughts that made him get up that night, though, careful not to wake Alfred (not that anything less than a rock concert could wake the kid, he slept so deeply—hell, he could probably sleep through a fire alarm), and trundle into the kitchen. 

It was two-thirty in the morning, and Arthur couldn't sleep, and he didn't want to end up eating cheap, too-sugary donuts that Alfred had bought them on the way to the university, so he figured he might as well make breakfast. 

It's not like the aroma would wake Alfred, and there wasn't anything else for Arthur to do. 

He got out a bowl and scoured the cabinets for ingredients to make scones. He made good scones, if he did say so himself ( _British_ -style scones, not American scones—Americans messed it up). Sometimes they got a little burnt, but only a little, and they were still good. Especially with tea. 

Tea which Alfred would only drink if the it was caffeinated, and the bitter taste was completely drowned out in so much cream and sugar it could hardly be called tea anymore. Arthur would argue that the tea was not bitter, Alfred just had defective taste buds, and drink his tea plain. And of course, Alfred would say that Arthur was the one with defective taste buds, because he liked everything so bland, and Arthur would respond that his tastebuds were _refined_ , and Alfred only needed to smother his food in sugar or hot sauce because his tastebuds were so weak that otherwise he couldn't taste anything. 

They would bicker goodnaturedly, like they'd done since they were children, and even when their comments became more scathing and their voices raised, the anger never lasted long. They were brothers, and they were always there for each other. 

Alfred would keep Arthur from getting too depressed; Arthur would keep Alfred from doing anything stupid; Alfred would comfort Arthur after yet another date dumped him, try to convince him that there was nothing wrong with him except his choice of dates because they were all lame if they didn't see how awesome he was; Arthur would try to give lame pep talks when the stress of all the schoolwork got Alfred down, and Alfred would end up laughing and making fun of his attempts, and end up feeling much better. 

Still, it would have been nice to have other friends. Alfred would always say that Arthur was determined to live in isolationism, but Arthur had just never really… clicked, with anyone. Alfred was outgoing and made friends easily, but Arthur wasn't like that. So when Alfred would go hang out with Matthew (who Alfred was convinced was his clone, because they looked so much alike) and Kiku, and whoever else he decided to torture with his overenthusiastic presence on that given day, Arthur would hang out with a good fantasy book. Arthur had acquaintances in the theater department where he worked, of course, but they couldn't exactly be termed his _friends_ , because they never hung out after work. 

And whenever he tried to date anyone, it always ended up in disaster. They always broke up with him. Sometimes they yelled, sometimes they didn't. It was almost worse when they didn't. Common reasons for breaking up with him were that he was too inattentive, too restrained in his affections, too irritable; he didn't make them feel loved, or wanted, or needed; he was too stiff, too formal, too pompous; he was insensitive and clueless when it came to emotions. Sometimes they didn't give any reason aside from that he was boring. 

The dating game had been exhausting, and Arthur had all but given up a couple months ago, when his last date hadn't even told him that they were breaking up—had just started going out with someone else, and gone to treating Arthur like he didn't even exist. 

But whatever. Arthur didn't need anyone. It wasn't like he was lonely (except sometimes). He liked being by himself (most of the time), and he had Alfred (annoying little brother that he was). 

He was good at convincing himself he was content. And he was doing so as he padded around the kitchen in fluffy socks, pajamas decorated with the British flag, and his favorite leather jacket that he wore everywhere, mixing the ingredients for the scones. 

His only problem, as far as he was concerned in that moment, was that he had trouble sleeping. It would be nice to be able to sleep well at night so he wasn't nodding off throughout the day, dark bags under his eyes, a thermos of caffeinated tea in his hands. 

He preheated the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit (stupid American stoves not using Celsius), and lined a baking sheet with parchment paper. He sifted the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt into a bowl, rubbed in the butter until the mixture resembled fine breadcrumbs, stirred in the sugar and enough milk to mix to a soft dough. 

He was humming to himself as he did so, some tune that was stuck in his head that he couldn't remember the title or the lyrics to. All he knew was the tune, and he was possibly mangling that anyway. Not that it mattered. It was two forty-five in the morning, and he couldn't sleep, so he was baking, because he liked baking. There was something almost meditative about it. 

He turned the dough onto a floured cutting board, kneading lightly and rolling out to a three-fourth-inch thickness. He cut the dough into two-inch rounds and placed them on the prepared baking sheet, brushing them with milk to glaze. 

Alfred liked American scones better, but of course he did. American scones had more fat and sugar, and fancy add-ins. He would still eat the British scones that Arthur cooked, though, and obediently spread butter and jam on top like Arthur instructed, ending up with jam all over his fingers and face, and Arthur would have to chase him around their small apartment with a napkin while Alfred laughed and threatened to rub his sticky fingers on Arthur's pillow. 

It was always worth it, though, Arthur felt, smiling slightly as he put the pan in the oven, shutting the door and setting the timer to ten minutes. He brushed his hands together, simply because it felt satisfying to do, and put his hands on his hips as he watched timer count down. 

He watched green numbers changing for three minutes, and then got bored and wandered out of the kitchen into their living room. The kitchen light was on, but not the living room light, and he threw himself face-first down on the couch in the dimness, groaning because he could, and there was nobody there to hear him (Alfred was asleep and wouldn't hear him, and therefore didn't count.) 

He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, but that was too similar to what he'd been doing before he'd decided to start baking (and the living room ceiling was not any more interesting than the bedroom ceiling), so he got up and started pacing around the room, hands in his jacket pockets. 

He fell back into his thoughts again, brow creasing and mouth pulled into frown as he walked around and around the couch, so preoccupied that he didn't hear the kitchen timer go off. 

He didn't realize the scones were done until he smelled something burning. 

With an exclaimed curse, he rushed into the kitchen, grabbed an oven mitt and pulled the smoking scones out, setting the tray on the stove. 

He coughed and waved the smoke away from his face, staring sadly down at the burnt crisps. He was honestly considering holding a funeral for them and giving them a proper burial, when the smoke alarm started going off. 

He cursed again, walking over and throwing the windows open, hoping their neighbors in the apartment complex wouldn't get too angry at him for waking them up at—he glanced at the clock—three in the morning. 

Wasn't there some way to turn the bloody fire alarm off? It kept wailing and wailing, filling his ears. 

He heard screams outside his door, and then somebody was pounding at the wood, yelling for him to get out of his room and get outside, there was a fire. 

Sighing in resignation, Arthur walked over to the door and opened it, ready to apologize and explain the misunderstanding, gulping as he looked up into Berwald's terrifying visage. 

The tall man glared down at him, and Arthur felt an awfully lot like cowering in his fuzzy socks, his breath caught, terrified, in his chest, like it didn't want to exit Arthur's lungs and expose itself to the severe man in front of him. 

“Get out of your apartment and get outside,” the man said stonily. “There's a fire. And wake your brother.” 

And then Berwald walked away, and Arthur could breathe again, and he was going to call out and explain, when he realized that the hallway was filled with smoke that smelled quite different from the smoke in his kitchen, and frazzled people were running down the hallway, and suddenly he noticed the roaring sound of flames. 

And then the panic set in, and Arthur was rushing back into the bedroom, shaking Alfred roughly and yelling at him to get up, because there was a fire, and they had to get out now. 

And of course, the first thing Alfred said as he woke up was, “A fire? Wha'didja do, 'Rthur? Catch the scones on fire?” 

And Arthur yelled at him that no, he hadn't caught the scones on fire—he'd only burned them a little bit—but that wasn't important because there was a fire in another part of the building, and _they had to get outside or they were going to burn alive and die. Can't you smell the smoke you wanker?!_

That woke Alfred up. The younger man was out of bed in a flash, grabbing his bomber jacket and Arthur's arm and tugging him out of their apartment into the smoke-filled hallway, bending low as they walked and pulling their nightshirts up over their noses, hurrying to the stairwell. 

They got outside, joining the scared and nervous crowd of their fellow apartment complex occupants, Alfred was definitely the happiest one out there. 

“I'm so proud of you for not being the cause of our building burning down!” Alfred grinned, thumping Arthur on the back. “I was sure that if this ever happened, it would be because of your horrendous baking skills!” 

Arthur was protesting that he _wasn't that bad at baking it, bugger off_ , when he caught sight of their next door neighbor, standing in nothing but a pair of underwear that was in the colors of the French flag, and also far too small and tight to be legal. 

And the man was just standing there in nothing but that ridiculous, skimpy piece of underwear, arms crossed over his chest as he shivered, shoulder-length blond hair blowing back from his faze in the cool breeze as he watched the vibrant flames leaping from their apartment building and the firetrucks wail around the corner, firefighters pouring out and connecting their huge hose to the nearby fire hydrant, while others came to the group of occupants to ask if everyone was accounted for or if anybody was still inside. 

Alfred caught site of where Arthur was he looking, and he started laughing, saying, “Man, I can't believe Francis sleeps in that! It's so Francis, though, I supposed I should've known!” 

Francis. Right, that was the man's name. Arthur had seen him around, but had never actually talked to him. All he knew about the man was that he spoke French as well as English, and that he worked as a chef at a fancy French restaurant in the city that those at the university who were affluent enough loved to take dates to and rave about. He only knew that Francis worked there because he'd heard from Alfred that Alfred's friend Ludwig had a brother who was friends with a chef there who happened to also be their next door neighbor, and Alfred had pointed Francis out and Arthur had nodded and said that was that interesting, even though it wasn't, and he'd quickly looked away from the alleged chef because the sight of him was doing funny things to Arthur's stomach. 

Arthur had made sure to avoid their next door neighbor after that. He'd have just ended up acting awkward, and they didn't need an awkward thing going on with the guy who lived right next to them, because everyone knows that next door neighbors can make one's life very, very miserable. 

And besides, what was Arthur supposed to say to him? _Hello, I think that you're attractive, would you like to go on a date with me, assuming that you like me at least as much as you like women?_ Besides, he knew Francis was straight and had no difficulty getting dates, if the influx of girlfriends to his apartment was any indication. Arthur was grateful the walls of their apartment building were relatively soundproofed. 

But now, staring at the man shivering in his skimpy little ridiculous underwear (and not admiring that toned body, thank you very much), Arthur couldn't just stand there. He was, if sometimes rather rude, a perfect gentleman, and he felt his gentlemanliness seize hold of him as he walked over, slipping off his leather jacket as he did so. 

He practically shoved the jacket into a surprised Francis's hands, mumbling that Francis should at least show some amount of public decency, because he couldn't say that Francis looked cold, because that was a ridiculous romance novel line, and this was not a ridiculous romance novel. 

And Francis grinned as he took the jacket, saying, “ _Merci, mon ami,_ ” as he slipped the jacket on. 

Of course, Francis was taller than Arthur, and the jacket was so short on him that it barely reached his belly button, and definitely didn't cover up those ridiculous panties. But it was still better than the man standing there nearly naked. 

Arthur just mumbled something indistinguishable and walked back over to where Alfred was standing there, grinning at who-knew-what. 

Arthur was somewhat chagrined when Francis followed him. 

“Alfred,” Francis greeted cheerfully. “How are you, mon ami?” 

“Well, our apartment building is burning down,” Alfred pointed out, gesturing to the flames roaring from the building that the firefighters were attacking with their high-powered water hose. “But other than that, I'm doing great! How about you, dude?” 

“Same,” Francis said, smiling, and Arthur glared at him, because the smile was grating on his nerves. Francis's entire presence was grating on his nerves. Just because he'd given the man his jacket didn't mean that he wanted him around, for goodness' sakes! 

“You know,” Francis was looking at them, still smiling, and looking entirely too comfortable in his ridiculous panties and Arthur's leather jacket, “I live next door to you two, but we've never really talked, and I realize now that I don't know anything about you side from that fact that you,” he nodded at Alfred, “go to the university with one of my best friends' little brother.” 

Alfred snickered, “Don't let Ludwig hear you calling him little!” and Francis chuckled. 

“But really,” Francis said, looking at them seriously once more. “I don't know anything about you. Why don't you tell me about yourselves? It's not like we have anything better to do right now, anyway,” he added, gesturing to the burning building behind them. 

“Origin story time!” Alfred crowed, before launching into an extravagant tale about how they were international spies who'd been training since they were babies, and how they'd been on missions all around the world and had saved the country from Soviet missiles during the Cold War (because apparently they'd been injected with some kind of super-serum that kept them from aging), and how they were currently under cover at the university, spying on Ivan Braginski because the American government thinks he's a Russian spy, and Arthur was posing as a Brit and that's why he had the fake accent, because he was actually gay but he wanted people to think he was a Brit so they wouldn't be able to figure out whether he was gay or European, and Alfred had flown them to America himself from where they'd been previously stationed in North Korea making sure there were no atomic bombs there. 

And Arthur kept butting in to say that, _no, they're not international spies, and just because you're academic rivals with Ivan and you're American while he's Russian does not mean he's a Russian spy, and the Cold War is over, and no my British accent is not fake, I studied there for four years it's completely real, and also, I'm not gay, I'm bi, and you've never flown an airplane in your life what are you talking about, nobody would believe this crackpot story of yours how much of an idiot are you shut up right now._

And Alfred had responded that yes they were definitely international spies and of course they should tell the truth, to which Arthur had said that if we were actually international spies we wouldn't tell him that, and Alfred had quoted Jack Sparrow and said, “Unless we knew he wouldn't believe the truth even if we told it to him!” 

And then Alfred went on to explain that they had superpowers—that unfortunately did not help with putting out fires—from falling into a radioactive swimming pool, and his superpower was the power to always do the right thing, while Arthur's power was the power to cook food that could be used to poison people, and Arthur furiously ranted that _my cooking isn't that bad, you know that, and also those are ridiculous superpowers._

And all throughout their absurd argument, Francis was laughing, and it wasn't until Arthur had finally just grabbed Alfred in a headlock to try to get him to shut up that he was struck by the fact that _Francis was laughing_ , and it was quite possibly the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard. 

And then he mentally pounded himself for sounding like an idiot. 

When it was Francis's turn, he told them he was a pansexual angel sent from the heavens to spread the sacred messages of love and French cuisine among the mortals of the Earth, and Alfred apparently thought that was the most hilarious thing ever, while Arthur glared at the both of them and tried not to feel hopeful at the mention of Francis's sexuality. 

Eventually some of the firefighters came over to tell the crowd of occupants that they couldn't go back to their apartments, some of them at least not for the rest of the night and others longer, and that everyone should disperse. 

The floor that Arthur, Alfred, and Francis had been living on had been one of the most damaged ones. 

For a few moments after the announcement, the three of them were silent. 

_We don't have anywhere else to go_ , Arthur had said, quietly, finally breaking the silence. 

“My clone Matthew might let us stay with him,” Alfred said, always the optimist. “He's a really great guy like that!” 

But then Francis was grinning at them and saying, “You two could stay with me!” 

Alfred grinned and exclaimed, “That would be awesome, man!” but Arthur just narrowed his eyes and asked where Francis would be staying, because his apartment had been burned too, after all. 

“I have a friend that will take us in,” Francis grinned. Then the grin faltered, and he tilted his head forehead to scratch at the back of his neck, chuckling lowly as he admitted, “But, uh, I left my cellphone my apartment.” 

“That's okay, I have my cellphone with me!” Alfred exclaimed, pulling the cellphone from a pocket of his bomber jacket and handing it over, grinning and clapping Francis on the shoulder. “Seriously, man, thank you so much for doing this for us!” 

“ _Pas de problème,_ ” Francis said, waving a hand airily as he dialed a number and held the phone up to his ear. A few rings, and then the call was picked up, and he grinned as he said, “Hey, Antonio! Can I ask you an itty bitty huge favor from you, _mon ami?_ ” 

Arthur groaned and hid his face in his hands, resigning himself to his fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The difference between American and British scones.](https://www.cooksillustrated.com/features/8521-the-difference-between-british-and-american-scones-test-cook-andrea-geary-explains)
> 
> [The British scone recipe I used.](http://allrecipes.com/recipe/7086/basic-british-scones/)


	2. GerPru: Hospital AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** my nurse just came in to check my vitals and I told him to fight me from beneath a mountain pillows. He just moved my pillows and told me maybe later.  
>  he just came in again and when I tried to tell him to fight me again I started coughing and I couldn’t breathe and then then he just smiled and told he won’t fight me because he knows I’d win  
> Apparently I seduced him with my drool and terrible lungs because he wrote his number on a coffee from the giftshop under “fight me?”
> 
> Imagine your OTP

* * *

**Fight Me**

* * *

Having pneumonia sucked. 

Actually, first Gilbert got the flu, which he blamed Francis for, because Francis had gotten the flu first, and had then passed it on to his friends Gilbert and Antonio, because that's just the type of awesome we're-all-in-this-together type of friend that Francis was. 

Anyways, they got the antiviral medication, and Francis and Antonio both got better, the lucky bastards. While, for whatever reasons, Gilbert got pneumonia instead of getting better. Apparently his immune system was weaker, according to the doctors; but no, apparently it did not have anything to do with his albinism, but had he been feeling particularly stressed lately? 

No, of course he wasn't stressed—what could possibly be stressful about his job teaching kids the Olympic sport of fencing? It was a dream job, truly, even if the kids were brats, and Francis and Antonio kept asking him to sub for some of their classes so they could go out with their dates, which was completely unfair, since Gilbert didn't have a date, and it meant they were spending more time with their dates than with the awesome him. He just hoped none of them had gotten any of the kids sick.

They were cute kids, and it was somewhat endearing how they referred to the self-proclaimed Bad Friends Trio as the Three Muskateers, even if it caused the three to argue about who was who, with Francis ending up as Porthos, Antonio as Aramis, leaving Gilbert as Athos. Of course, Gilbert and Antonio also complained, mostly for the sake of complaining, that it would mean they'd both be French, which was unthinkable, and Francis was way too smug and kept telling them about King Louis whatever-number of France, Gilbert didn't give a _Sheiße_. 

And he was still mad at Francis for ending him up here, in this stupid hospital bed in this stupid white hospital room that he practically blended into, which also smelled cloyingly of antiseptic, and forget the risk of dying of viral pneumonia, Gilbert was going to die of _boredom._

Or maybe he'd die of pneumonia first. He was feeling miserable, to put it lightly. He had a fever, a dry cough, a headache, muscle pains, and he felt weak. His breathlessness had been getting worse, his fever had been getting higher, his coughing had gotten worse and was hurting like hell and had started producing small amounts of mucus, and apparently his lips were blue from lack of oxygen, which didn't sound good, and he probably didn't look good. On top of the red eyes and sickly pale skin, he now had blue lips. Great. Just what he needed. 

He'd originally been sent home with the antibiotics and the instructions to drink plenty of fluids, get lots of rest and have someone else do household chores, no take any cough medicine without first consulting the doctor, and to control his fever with aspirin, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or acetaminophen. 

He lived alone in an apartment, though, and there wasn't anyone to force him to rest or drink plenty of fluids, and he'd convinced himself that he was _fine—awesome,_ in fact—and he could still do chores. As long as he took the antibiotics, he'd be good as new in no time! 

However, he'd been taking the antibiotics at home but wasn't getting better, and then his symptoms had gotten worse, and a concerned Francis and Antonio had hurried him to the hospital, where he was admitted. 

Apparently he had viral pneumonia instead of bacterial pneumonia, which meant that antibiotics didn't do anything. 

And apparently, since he had viral pneumonia, he was also at risk of getting bacterial pneumonia, which would make things worse to the point where his mental state may fall into confusion or delerium, which Gilbert _did not want to happen_. He didn't want to die from _verdammten_ pneumonia, of all things, and he didn't want to lose his mental faculties to the point where he couldn't appreciate the hot male nurse that came in to check on him. 

Because this guy was _hot_. Tall, blond, piercing blue eyes, broad shoulders and muscles that he must cultivate by spending every minute of his time not spent sleeping or eating or working as a nurse, at a gym working out. Nurses should not allowed to be so sexy. It simply wasn't fair. This guy would only see him at his worst, coughing and drooling and shaking with chills. 

And Gilbert didn't even know this nurse's name, since he couldn't read the man's name tag without his glasses, because maybe a weak immune system wasn't a symptom of albinism, but poor eyesight was.

So basically, everything in Gilbert's life at the moment sucked. 

Except for the sexy nurse. But the sexy nurse wasn't there, and that sucked. So therefore everything in Gilbert's life at the moment sucked. 

Groaning loudly to make his misery known plainly to the empty hospital room, Gilbert buried further under the mountain of pillows on the hospital bed (those pillows had been hard-won: Gilbert had used every charm in his metaphysical toolbox to convince various members of the hospital staff to give him more pillows). 

He shivered. 

He clenched his eyes shut against the pain in his head, but the headache had been locked on the wrong side. 

He coughed, which caused the sharp, stabbing chest pain to get worse. 

At that point he just wanted to bury himself under the mountain of pillows and never come out. 

Up until the moment the door opened, and a deep, baritone voice that made Gilbert shiver for reasons entirely unrelated to his illness said, “Gilbert, I need to check your vitals.” 

Gilbert was quick to poke his head up out of the pillows, grinning the brightest grin he could, which probably still looked like a grimace, as he watched the nurse walk over with some vitals-checking instruments or whatever. 

“Fight me,” Gilbert rasped, eyes challenging, watching intently the nurse's approach. He wasn't even entirely sure why he said it, only that he was suddenly very much in the mood to fight something. 

“Maybe later,” the nurse said, carefully moving the pillows away so he could check Gilbert's temperature and listen to his breathing and whatever else. Gilbert did not at all understand any of this medical stuff. 

The nurse left for a moment to get something else, and when he came back, Gilbert jutted out his chin. 

“Fight me,” he rasped, only for the rasp to catch in his throat and start him coughing, doubling over and wheezing at the pain in his chest and gasping for air that was suddenly so, so hard to get. 

Once the coughing fit subsided, the nurse just smiled. The smile lit up the room and Gilbert stared in wonderment. 

“I'm not going to fight you because I know you'd win,” the nurse said, in that deep, rumbling voice that held trace of a German accent. “I can tell you're a fighter. That pneumonia doesn't stand a chance.” 

And just like that, any thoughts of giving in to that feeling of wanting everything to end was banished from Gilbert's mind. He was going to kick this pneumonia's _Arsch_ , if he had to do it with pure concentrated power of will. 

Gilbert found it rather amusing that, before the nurse left, he went to the effort to replace the pillows exactly where they'd been before he'd moved them out of the way. 

After that, Gilbert dozed off in much-needed recuperation sleep.

* * *

“Fight me?” Gilbert asked, every time the nurse came in to check on him. 

“Maybe later,” was the nurse's standard answer. But he smiled each time. 

The urge to fight that Gilbert got from that smile was entirely unlike any other urge to fight he'd ever had. 

That smile—that smile didn't make him want to fight against something. It made him want to fight for something. 

The nurse was right. The pneumonia never stood a chance.

* * *

On the day Gilbert was finally discharged from the hospital, feeling a million times better and unable to stop grinning, the nurse smiled at him and handed him a coffee. 

“Stay healthy, Gilbert,” he said, and walked off, Gilbert staring after him with the sinking feeling of hopelessness curling in his stomach. 

It wasn't until Gilbert was sitting shotgun Antonio's car as the Spaniard drove him back to his house (Antonio said that Francis didn't come because he didn't want to be murdered and was going to avoid him for a few more days, and Gilbert merely muttered that he wouldn't murder Francis, honestly, he'd only maim him a little bit—he might even let the Frenchman keep the use of one of his arms!) that Gilbert looked at the coffee cup in his hands and saw a phone number written under the words: 

_Fight me?_

When Gilbert turned the cup, he saw that the nurse had signed his name as well. 

_Ludwig._

Gilbert's breath caught. 

“What is it?” Antonio asked, glancing over at him in concern. 

And then Gilbert burst out laughing, doubling over, breathless in a way that was much more pleasant than that from coughing, and Antonio asked, _“What?!”_

Straightening, Gilbert grinned, waving the empty cup of coffee before Antonio. “Apparently I seduced the nurse with my drool and terrible lungs, because he left me his number!” 

_“De verdad?”_ Antonio said, glancing at him. 

_“Ja!”_ Unable to stop grinning, Gilbert leaned back, brushing his fingers over the neat handwriting on the cup, chest swelling with hope. “Maybe I don't need to maim Francis after all!”


	3. AmeCan: Walked into a door AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** Love the Step 1 - Lose the gun. Yes!! Makes me super proud to be Canadian! +gunnarolla Next time you make a Canada song, include that we spell things differently and we always say sorry. I am from Vancouver and bumped into the door of an elevator and apologized to the door... so 'Canadian ' (Super Yogagirl youtube comment "Canadian Please" music video)
> 
> Malcolm Gladwell: “[…] an awful lot of my ideology, it's just Canadian. Canadians like small, modest things, right? We don't believe in boasting. We think the world is basically a good place. We're pretty optimistic. We think we ought to take care of each other. And it so happens that to be Canadian in America is to seem quite radical.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does anybody know the name of this pairing? Because when I was trying to think of what it would be, I came up with AmeriCan XD

* * *

**Sorry**

* * *

Matthew really should have been looking where he was going. 

He was usually he was a very aware and perceptive person (part of why he'd gone into Psychology). It wasn't like him to so caught up in thinking about the attractive guy in his Statistics course that he wasn't paying attention and walked straight into a closed door, even if the door had been open every single other time Matthew had take this exit out of the building. 

So as it was, Matthew walked straight into the door. 

“Oh, I'm so sorry!” he exclaimed as he stumbled back a step, hand on his forehead where he'd hit the wood, looking at the door apologetically. “I didn't see you there.” 

But before he could open the door and step outside, he was distracted by a familiar loud voice echoing down the hall.

“I gotta go get some burgers now, cuz _man_ am I starving!” 

Heartbeat quickening, Matthew turned around to see Alfred walking down the hallway backwards, yelling across a steadily growing distance at his two other students. If Matthew recalled correctly, their names were Francis and Arthur, and like Alfred they were business majors.

“Careful you don't give yourself a heart attack, eating that junk food,” Arthur shouted back at Alfred as he and Francis walked in the other direction. 

“I'll be fine!” Alfred yelled cheerfully. “I have a high metabolism! Don't worry, I'll still be there to sit next to you two lovebirds in Econ later today!” 

That earned a squawk from Arthur and laughter from Francis, and the two disappeared around the corner bickering. 

Laughing brightly, Alfred had just started to turn around to start walking forwards when he walked straight into the door—the same one Matthew had walked into, and the one he was currently standing beside, watching the scene. 

Matthew really should have warned Alfred that he was about to walk into a door. But sometimes, when he was watching people, he became so absorbed as a viewer that he forgot that he had a body in this world and could actually interact with the people he was watching (whether this tendency was the cause of most people treating Matthew like he didn't exist, or the result, Matthew didn't know, but it always surprised him whenever any of the people he was watching suddenly turned and started talking to him, reminding him that he existed—and maybe that was one of the reasons why he liked Alfred so much). 

So as it was, Alfred walked obliquely into the door. 

“Fuck you!” Alfred exclaimed, whirling and kicking the door. “What the fuck was that for?!” he demanded, glaring at the piece of wood and gesturing wildly with his hands. “I was walking that way, y'know!” 

With all his wild gesturing, Alfred accidentally grazed Matthew in the face. 

“Sorry!” Matthew said, hand to his cheek where he'd been scratched slightly by Alfred's nails. 

Alfred just stared at him for him a few moments, jaw open, before he said, “Dude! What're you apologizing for! I'm the one that accidentally hit you!” 

“And I accidentally got in the way of your flailing hands,” Matthew answered, smiling slightly. 

Alfred stared at him. 

Still with that small smile on his face, Matthew opened the door that they'd both walked into, holding it open for Alfred. 

Only, Alfred didn't move. 

“Coming outside?” Matthew asked, still holding the door open, sunlight on his back and a soft breeze in his hair as he looked at Alfred, tilting his head. “I thought you were walking this way.” 

Slowly, Alfred walked through the doorway, and Matthew closed the door gently before turning around to find Alfred still giving him that look. 

“What?” Matthew asked, suddenly feeling worried. 

“You are _so_ nice!” Alfred blurted. He began gesturing with his hands again. “How are you so nice?! Are all Canadians so nice?” 

Matthew just shrugged, trying not to blush, even though there was really nothing to blush about. 

“I mean, not only do you apologize when I'm the one who hit you, but then you _ld the door open_ for me! Who the hell holds doors open for anybody nowadays?!” Alfred said, shaking his head. 

“I also apologized to the door when I accidentally walked into it,” Matthew said, because he wanted to see Alfred's expression. 

Alfred's face did not disappoint. Wide eyes, gaping mouth, looking at Matthew like he was crazy—but he was _looking_ , and he was looking at Matthew, not _through_ him, which was more than could be said for most. 

“That's, like, _radically_ nice!” Alfred exclaimed finally. 

Matthew's lips tugged upwards. “I'm not radically nice, actually. I'm just Canadian. We always say sorry, and we think the world is basically a good place. We're pretty optimistic. We think we ought to take care of each other. It just so happens that to be Canadian in America is to seem quite radical.” 

Alfred kept staring at him for several moments, and then he looked away, rubbing a hand through the dirty-blond hair on the back of his head. “Dammit, you're so nice that you make me feel bad.” 

“Sorry,” Matthew said automatically. 

Alfred looked back at him, blue eyes wide behind his glasses, and then suddenly he threw back his head and laughed, loud and bright. 

It was a lovely sound, and Matthew couldn't help but smile. 

“So,” Alfred said, grinning, jauntily, a hand on his hip, “how 'bout I take you out t'lunch and make it up t'you?” 

“Yes,” Matthew smiled, feeling lit up from the inside. “I'd like that. Thank you.” 

Alfred beamed and grabbed Matthew's hand, beginning to pull him along excitedly, like some kind of adorable puppy. “Awesome! Let's go!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not Canadian. The only Canadian I know is one of my dance teachers, though, and she's _super_ nice. 
> 
> As an American, I can say that cursing and kicking the door would probably have been my response. Once, I was running alongside my mom's car, and it tried to run over my foot, and I ended up cursing and kicking it, and broke a piece of plastic off. And my mom was just like, “You broke the car!” and I was just like, “It was just a piece of plastic! And besides, the car tied to run over my foot! It deserved it!” (I'm nicer to people and other living beings, I promise, lol.) 
> 
> We do apologize in dance class, though, when we hit each other—both the person who did the hitting and the person who got hit. Though admittedly, when dancing, it's hard to tell exactly who hit who. 
> 
> The part about Canadians holding doors open I got from a youtube video “AMERICAN TRIVIA ft. Will Carmack” by Joey Kidney, as well as the video “TOP 10 TRUE CANADIAN STEREOTYPES!” by MissFenderr. Apparently the niceness and over-apologizing is true. 
> 
> My dance teacher said that, because it's so cold in Canada and it snows so much, that communities are really tight-nit because living in snow is difficult, so everyone helps each other out, like getting out to help someone who's car got stuck in the snow or something. 
> 
> If our car breaks down on the side of the road here in America, for whatever reason, you're basically on your own. Although from what I've heard, sometimes motorcyclists will help each other out, and bicyclists will help each other out, because they're kind of a community, in a way. 
> 
> Anyways. Stereotypes. Stereotypes are… interesting. I don't know. Obviously, different cultures have different values, which result in general cultural differences that affect behavior, and it's good to be away of cultural differences. However, it's when these ideas of cultures are oversimplified and fixed that they truly become _stereotypes_. Because yes, there may be a general culture thing, but not everyone is that way (take Americans loving American football, for example—it's true that many Americans are obsessed with football, but I don't care for it). And then of course there are those stereotypes that stem from prejudices and people trying to justify feelings of superiority over others, which are are just stupid. 
> 
> Look up ['the stereotype song'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZOOm7NdTqo) on youtube. It makes fun of how ridculous stereotypes are. It's great.


	4. GerPru: Jaywalking AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** “Two men are standing at a red traffic light. Despite no car anywhere in sight, neither of them crosses the street. One of them turns to the other and says “Oh, you’re German too?”
> 
> I talked with people about this and they confirmed again that you indeed always get looks if you jaywalk. I once missed the tram because there were people with me at the traffic light so I didn’t dare cross. There is some truth to the stereotype.

* * *

**How We Met**

* * *

They were seated at a table in the bar, the four of them: Gilbert, his two friends from childhood, Elizabeta and Roderich (who were together now—big surprise there; note the sarcasm), and his boyfriend, Ludwig. 

He and Ludwig had recently moved back to Germany, after graduating from Université Paris Dauphine in Paris, France. 

And now Gilbert, Elizabeta and Roderich were catching up while Ludwig tried not to appear to awkwardly uncomfortable and uncertain. 

Gilbert noticed, though, and reached over to lace his fingers through Ludwig's. 

“I know Elizabeta can be scary,” Gilbert said, dodging deftly when Elizabeta tried to smack him in the arm, “but I promise she's harmless until about her seventh drink, at which point she goes on a frying-pan-wielding rampage.” 

“That was _once!_ ” Elizabeta protested indignantly, gesturing with her second bottle of beer.

“ _Twice,_ ” Gilbert corrected with a snort, narrowing his eyes at her and challenging her to argue, before turning back to Ludwig. “And don't mind the prick there,” he said, gesturing at Roderich, who pursed his lips and glared coolly. “He's insufferable every single moment he's awake, except for when he's playing the piano, at which point he's tolerable, or drunk enough that he goes on his Wolfgang-Mozart-and-Ludwig-van-Beethoven-both-belong-to-Austria-NOT-Germany-because-REASONS rant, at which point he's amusing.” 

“I resent that statement,” Roderich said haughtily, but Gilbert ignored him. 

Ludwig gave Gilbert's hand a reassuring squeeze. “I don't want to run away,” he said softly. 

“Your countenance claims otherwise,” Gilbert said.

“Well, considering that I'm often told my expression looks like I'm planning to murder someone, I'd consider an expression that merely looks like I want to run away to be downright amiable,” Ludwig said smoothly, and Gilbert laughed. 

“Still, though,” he said, leaning over to give Ludwig a quick kiss on the lips, before pulling away to say earnestly: “If you want to escape, I'll run away with you anytime you want.” 

That prompted a small smile from Ludwig, which Gilbert had to kiss, because it was so beautiful. He practically fell out of his chair to do so, and Ludwig caught him, wrapping an arm around his waist to steady him, chuckling into the kiss. 

“You two are _so_ cute together,” Elizabeta said when they'd pulled apart. She was smiling happily, eyes bright with interest as she asked, “How did you two meet?” 

“Now _that's_ an interesting story,” Gilbert grinned, as he slipped back into his own seat, keeping his hand entwined with Ludwig's. 

Ludwig groaned. “ _Please_ don't let this be the version with the vampire zombies that chase us into a janitor closet, and which we then fend off with cleaning supplies.” 

“Zombie _vampires,_ ” Gilbert corrected, winking at Elizabeta when she laughed. “But no, that version of the story is only for people too unawesome to appreciate the subtle beauty that was our first true meeting.” 

“I don't appreciate the implication that my friends are 'unawesome,'” Ludwig said. 

“But they wouldn't _get_ it,” Gilbert said, tugging at Ludwig's hand, pouting slightly. “Elizabeta and Roderich will _get_ it!” 

“There's nothing to get,” Ludwig sighed, before looking at Elizabeta. “We met while waiting to cross the street,” he said simply. 

“You _suck_ at telling stories!” Gilbert accused, punching him in the arm. “Shut up and let me tell it in all it's awesome glory!” 

“Make me,” Ludwig challenged. 

Something in Gilbert's red eyes glinted, and then he slid over and pressed close, tongue gliding around the inner shell of Ludwig's ear, whispering quietly for Ludwig's hearing only. 

A rubicund blush heated Ludwig's cheeks, and he silently nodded, swallowing, jaw clenched. Gilbert pulled away smugly. 

Elizabeta was laughing, while Roderich stared on coolly. 

Fingers still interlaced with Ludwig's, Gilbert turned to his friends with a grin. “So!” he said. “What happened was—”

* * *

_Gilbert, Francis and Antonio were walking to a nearby night club, laughing and shoving each other, when they came to light._

_The glowing red man told them clearly that they could not cross._

_Antonio glanced both ways down the street. “There's no cars coming!” he said, darting out into the street, Francis right behind him._

_“Guys!” Gilbert shrieked after them, eyes wide. “What are you doing?!”_

_“Crossing the street,” Francis said, as he and Antonio stopped in the middle of the street to look back at him. “What does it look like we're doing?”_

_“Jaywalking is what it looks like you're doing!” Gilbert hissed at them, eyes hard. “You're breaking the law!”_

_“Just let it go and get over here,” Francis said with a shake of his head, walking to the other side of the street._

_“No! I'm not a criminal, unlike you guys!” Gilbert said, glaring furiously across the street at them, arms crossed._

_“But there are no cars coming,” Antonio pointed out, stepping onto the opposite sidewalk and gesturing to the still-empty street._

_“That doesn't mean you can just break the law!” Gilbert shouted at them._

_“Wenn das jeder täte,” a voice next to him agreed._

_Gilbert jumped, whirling around to see a tall, broad, blond man with piercing blue eyes standing next to him, also glaring across the street at the Spaniard and Frenchman._

_“Oh, you're German too?” Gilbert asked._

_“Ja,” the man said, still glaring across the street._

_The man had an impressive glare, Gilbert thought smugly, turning back to inflict Antonio and Francis with a glare of his own, mimicking the other man's wide and disapproving stance. Surely, with the combined awesomeness of their efforts, Antonio and Francis would feel duly repentant for their infraction._

_The Spaniard and Frenchman were fidgeting uncomfortably. “All we did was cross the street!” Francis said indignantly._

_“If everybody did that, the system would descend into chaos,” Gilbert said._

_“And it sets a bad example for kids,” the man next to him added._

_Gilbert internally cheered. Ha! See Francis or Antonio argue against protecting the lives of innocent children! Gilbert was warming up to this fellow German already._

_By now, cars were passing down the street between them, white and red lights smearing in the evening light, the sound of their engines and their tires against the pavement making it hard to hear Antonio's call of, “We'll be waiting at the club for you!” as he and Francis practically fled down the sidewalk away from them._

_Gilbert sighed as they left. “They're good people most of the time,” he muttered._

_The man next to him was silent for a moment. “I have a friend who's American,” he said after a beat. “He'll cross the street where there are no crosswalks, and even when there are cars driving down the street. He doesn't care. He just walks out into the street and expects them all to stop for him.” The man snorted in frustration. “His argument is: What are they going to do, hit him? He cannot be reasoned with. I've taken to holding onto his jacket when we're out walking to keep him from randomly darting across the street and nearly killing himself and causing car accidents.”_

_Gilbert was staring at him, mouth agape. “You're kidding,” he said weakly._

_“I'm not,” the man said gravely. “I've nearly lost my voice yelling at him for it, but it does no good. His sense of self-entitlement is too deeply ingrained.”_

_Gilbert made a keening noise and turned his gaze to the glowing red man that signaled that they still couldn't walk. It had to be the longest light in the history of ever._

_They waited the rest of the time in silence. Not awkward silence—just silence._

_The red glowing man disappeared, and the glowing green walking man appeared. The two of them crossed the street._

_“Auf Wiedersehen,” the man said, holding out his hand._

_“Bis bald!” Gilbert grinned, shaking the man's hand._

_The man looked at him, then away, down the street. “Vielleicht,” he said, before turning and walking west._

_Gilbert, smirking to himself, turned and walked east._

* * *

“That was beautiful,” Elizabeta smiled. 

“I know, right?” Gilbert grinned. “It was the beautiful beginning of a beautiful relationship.”

“You romanticize it,” Ludwig said with a roll of his eyes. 

“We're romantic!” Gilbert defended, elbowing him. 

“Ouch,” Ludwig said obligingly. “Yes, very romantic.” 

Gilbert made a noise and leaned over to kiss him. 

“How did you get together?” Elizabeta asked, leaning forward, eyes shining with curiosity. 

“It's a long story,” Ludwig said flatly after Gilbert pulled away (Ludwig licking his lips for every lingering taste of the brief kiss). 

Gilbert laughed, squeezing Ludwig's hand. “That it is! We met in the first semester of our second year, but didn't actually get together till the second semester of our third year.” 

“What happened?” Elizabeta prompted. Even Roderich was looking slightly interested. 

Gilbert grinned. “Well, see, after we met that first time, we started seeing each other everywhere, I'm not even kidding. At coffee shops, on the streets of Paris, in the university buildings—that was when I realized he was also a student there, and was like, how hadn't I ever seen him before?! Because I surely would have remembered such an awesome figure.” 

Ludwig snorted. “And I surely would have remembered your distinctive eyes and hair, and your pugnacious and ebullient demeanor.” 

Gilbert just grinned at him. “It was like when we met, our fate strings got all tangled up, so we couldn't stop crashing into each other after that,” he said, nodding. 

“You've been talking with Kiku too much,” Ludwig muttered under his breath. 

“So then,” Gilbert continued on, “we kept seeing each other, and eventually I managed to figure out that he was an International Relations major—and, being a History major, that's probably why I hadn't seen him before, which meant that my eyesight wasn't actually failing me, which was a relief—and that his name was Ludwig, and eventually we go to talking about Germany and our families, and then one night he showed up at my dorm room, asking to sleep there—”

“My dormmate had brought a girl in,” Ludwig explained. “I couldn't sleep there with them doing things.”

“—which turned out to be a common occurrence from that day forward, because apparently Lud's roommate brought a lot of girls back,” Gilbert rolled on, “so we got to know each other better, and started hanging out whenever possible, and I got to learn all about all of Ludwig's rather endearing neurotic tics, and he got to learn all about my hidden insecurities that I definitely do not actually have because I am made of pure awesomeness, and then there was this one night where Ludwig came to my room because his was being used for _things_ ,” he snickered, “and I was standing outside my room with my phone about to call him to ask if I could come over to _his_ room, since mine was also taken that night with people doing _things_ , and so, since neither of us had anywhere to go, we ended up going out and drinking all night and getting shit-faced, and that led to drunken kissing, and then the next day we both had terrible headaches and I asked him out on a date to the grocery store to get aspirin, which was a fool-proof time for someone who feared rejection to ask someone else out who also feared rejection because he was far too hungover to refuse or put any painful amount of thought into it.” 

Gilbert grinned. “And that's how we got together!” 

“That was quite possibly the longest run-on sentence I've ever heard,” Ludwig stated. “And that's saying something, since you're prone to using long run-on sentences.” 

“You love it,” Gilbert said, grin showing teeth. 

Ludwig leaned close to whisper in Gilbert's ear: “Ich liebe _dich,_ ” before pressing a soft kiss to Gilbert's temple. “And that includes all your crazy quirks.” 

Elizabeta cooed. “ _Ihr seid perfekt zusammen!_ ” she smiled, before turning to her boyfriend. “Aren't they, Roderich?” 

“They're _something,_ ” Roderich relented.

Gilbert narrowed his eyes at Roderich, before grinning at Elizabeta smugly. “I know, right? My boyfriend is a much better catch than yours.” 

Elizabeta raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh, I wouldn't go _that_ far,” she said, smile turning into a smirk, before she turned and pulled Roderich into a kiss. 

Gilbert made gagging noises. Ludwig looked at him, raising an eyebrow. 

“What?” Gilbert said, shrugging. “I can't slack on my annoying little brother role! And Roderich's piano isn't here to keyboard-slam.” 

Ludwig just shook his head, smiling. “ _All_ your crazy quirks,” he said, using their interlaced hands to pull Gilbert closer. 

“Would you do anything for me?” Gilbert simpered, wrapping his arms around Ludwig's neck. 

“Anything,” Ludwig agreed. 

Gilbert smirked, moving a hand to poke Ludwig in his rock-hard abs. “Except cross the street when the light's red.” 

“Except that,” Ludwig agreed. 

“And taking a paper from the _Zeitungskästen_ without paying,” Gilbert added. 

“And that,” Ludwig agreed. 

“And breaking any law,” Gilbert added. 

Ludwig buried his nose in Gilbert's niveous hair. “Not necessarily,” he murmured. “I'd break a few laws for you.” 

Gilbert's fingers played with the blond hair at the nape of Ludwig's neck. “Like what?” Gilbert asked. 

“I'd break any law that tried to keep me from you,” Ludwig murmured, quietly, but with a conviction that made Gilbert shiver. Ludwig moved to press his lips against Gilbert's throat, before moving to his ear. “And you can run away with me anytime you want.” 

Gilbert made an indistinguishable noise and pulled Ludwig into an ardent kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Germans have a legendary reputation for sticking to the rule book. This is rooted in their (not entirely erroneous, I’m sure you’d agree) belief, that for society to work smoothly, a set of guidelines needs to be obeyed by the majority. And as tempting as it may be, at times, to weasel your way round them, Germans take great pride in resisting, because “wenn das jeder täte” (if everybody did that), the whole system would descend into chaos. And nobody wants that. It would be just sooo disorderly…_
> 
> _Foreign visitors have been known to watch with incredulity when witnessing an upstanding German citizen venting their indignation at somebody caught in the act of flaunting rules, some of which may, perhaps, seem rather trivial. For Germans, however, impeding minor infractions, such as failing to pick after your dog or making too much noise on Sundays, is seen as a collective responsibility._
> 
>   _If you crossed the street in Germany while the little red man was telling you not to, be prepared for your fellow pedestrians to pull you up on it. In the UK, this would NEVER happen. The reason given by Germans as to why they feel the compulsive need to police pedestrian crossings is “to not set kids a bad example”. Needless to say, any criticisms of rules conceived to protect lives of innocent children are dead in the water_ (ladyofthecakes on WordPress).
> 
> * * *
> 
> Apparently, Germans always shake everyone's hands when greeting people, and saying goodbye or thank you (GERMANY VS ENGLAND | DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES #1, by Get Germanized on youtube).
> 
> * * *
> 
> _Ranked at joint 369th in the world, Université Paris Dauphine is a multidisciplinary institution which specializes in subjects such as economics, math, business, IT, law and the social sciences. The university has three campuses in central Paris; the main campus is located in Porte Dauphine near the famous Arc de Triomphe and hosts 8,750 students and a faculty of 580 teachers. There is also a small school of journalism and one business center in the heart of the Parisian business district, La Defense. Proclaiming a “resolutely international outlook”, Université Paris Dauphine boasts a student body comprised of 30% international students_ (TopUniversities). 
> 
> I have never been to Paris, France (hence, the complete and utter lack of any kind of descriptions in this piece). Or to any place in France. So I honestly don't know anything about this university, or the city of Paris, or French culture, or anything. But I used Université Paris Dauphine because of its large percentage of international students, and because I needed Gilbert and Ludwig to not be studying in Germany for this prompt to work. However, there's no way they'd study in the US, what with the terribly high education prices here (it's absolutely absurd). 
> 
> Average tuition for public schools in France is about 200 dollars. Tuition at Université Paris Dauphine is 530 euros (591.45 dollars). (Average tuition in the US 32,405 dollars, but can exceed 60,000 dollars for some private institutions. And even public schools can exceed 10,000 dollars.)
> 
> * * *
> 
> While America has a legal drinking age of 21, both Germany and France of a legal drinking age of 16 (though France technically has two ages: 16 for wine and beer, 18 for hard liquor). In the flashback, Gilbert and Ludwig are in their second year of college, so they're 19 or 20.
> 
> * * *
> 
> While the term “I love you” is said all the time in English, diluted and often used very lightly and for any number of things, “I love you” in German holds _much_ more weight. It is _not_ said lightly. It is only said when one truly, deeply loves someone, and it's only used for romantic love. “Ich liebe dich,” is _not_ something that is ever said to one's parents, for example. That would be creepy and weird. (Information from Germany vs USA on youtube)
> 
> * * *
> 
> _Germans have a strong sense that some of the good things, which exist for everybody’s convenience and communal benefit, will be taken away if people don’t make an effort to preserve them. One example of this is newspapers sold from “honesty boxes”. These “Zeitungskästen” are positioned in accessible locations where you, the customer, is being trusted to deposit the correct amount of change before helping yourself to your daily rag_ (ladyofthecakes on WordPress).


	5. FrUK: Necromancy AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** Person A is dead and Person B sees the dead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to write something pretty. I'm not sure that it worked.

* * *

**Necromancer**

* * *

Arthur always walked to and from his high school through the graveyard. 

It was the shortest path from his home to the school, true, but he could've taken the longer route through the housing district like all the other kids from his neighborhood. They only ever walked through the graveyard on dares. It scared them, the solemn gravestones with their fading epitaphs and the way the wind whispered elegies incessantly. 

Arthur wasn't scared. 

“Creepy fuck,” the other students called him. “Sociopath.” 

Arthur ignored them. 

He liked walking through the graveyard. He liked talking to all the ghosts sitting atop their gravestones or wandering along the edges of the cemetery, looking longingly past the boundary they couldn't cross to their family and friends still living. 

“Good morning,” he nodded to Thomas Pyke, the lame World War II veteran who'd spent the rest of his days teaching children to play the guitar. “How are you today, Mr. Pyke?” 

A stray dog pissed on my grave yesterday, the man said, sitting atop the stone with one leg crossed over the other, fingers strumming softly on misty silver strings. Most anyone's left at my grave in a while, so I suppose I should be grateful. Made me miss Hunter though, the old mutt. Don't know where he's buried. Had him since I was a kid, but he died when I was overseas.

“I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Pyke,” Arthur said. “I'll bring you some flowers when I walk by here on my way home today, how does that sound?” 

That sounds just fine. Thank you, Kirkland. Say, how did your history teacher like that WWII essay of yours?

“She said it was good, for historical fiction.” 

Historical fiction?! Bah! All those experiences were true! 

“She didn't believe me when I said I interviewed a World War II veteran.” 

I suppose she wouldn't. You're a very special boy, Arthur, I hope you know that. 

“Believe me, Mr. Pyke, I know.” All his best friends were dead, after all. 

He stopped by the grave of Kitty Smith, the eight-year-old who'd died of pneumonia, to play one of her clapping games with her. Her laughter was as bright and silver as she was. 

“You have a laugh that makes fairies dance,” Arthur told her, smiling as she giggled in delight. 

Will you come play with me this Sunday? she asked. I always get lonely on Sunday. Most of the other ghosts go hang out around the Church, but it's so boring there. 

“I'd love to. If I can finish my homework I'll come, okay? But my English teacher is trying to kill me with essays, so it's possible I won't make it.” 

That's not very nice of your teacher to try to kill you with essays, Kitty said. 

“It's not,” Arthur agreed. 

Kitty was pouting, but then she brightened, her blurred outline pulsing stronger for a moment. Say, Arthur! If your teacher does end up killing you with essays, can you get buried next to me? 

Arthur laughed. “I'll see what I can do, Kitty,” he grinned, stroking fingers through the chilliness of her arm as she wrapped cold, incorporeal arms around his waist. 

He could have walked through her, but Arthur thought that rude, so he always coaxed her to let go first. He considered himself a gentleman, after all. 

It was the last leg of Arthur's walk when _he_ finally showed up.

Arthur, the voice purred, cold air over his ear. Mon amour. 

Arthur sighed. “What do you want, frog?” 

Mon ami, you wound me so! the ghost cried, clutching at his heart, before he laughed and tossed back silver locks that probably used to gold. Silver eyes that probably used to be blue shone. How are you, Anglais? 

“Why do you always call me that?” 

You're avoiding the question, I notice.

“So are you!” 

Ah, but my question is more important. 

“I'm fine. I'm going to be graduating soon. It's stressful.” 

A pensive silence as they walked, hands barely brushing. Arthur shivered at the cold sensation. 

And then you'll be leaving, the ghost said finally, quietly as they neared the edged of the cemetery. Won't you?

“Yes,” Arthur said, and sighed. “Look, Francis...” 

And I won't be able to come with you, Francis murmured, hand against the invisible wall that Arthur had just crossed, but which the ghost couldn't. 

Arthur turned back around to face him, a sad little tilt of his lips. “No, Francis. You won't.” 

Francis's androgynous features were pulled in pain. You can't leave me here, Anglais. 

“I don't have a choice, Frenchman.” 

Silver eyes downcast, silver hair streaming into a gray face, sheets of rain shimmering. There has to be a way. There has to be some way… 

That sad little tilt, green eyes that felt they'd bleed all their color if the clouds broke. “I'll see if I can find something… my grandmother had some old journals, there might…” 

Pale gray hand against an invisible wall, slipping down, falling limp beside pants that were probably once some ridiculously flamboyant color. You'll be late to school, Anglais. 

“Yeah.” A hand through blond hair. “I'll see you later today, Francis.” 

Green coat and brown boots disappeared around the bend. 

See you later, mon amour.

* * *

Arthur had snuck out of the house again, flashlight turned off in his pocket, making his way to the graveyard. Even the bravest of the high school jocks wouldn't dare the same. 

But sinister creakings to them were ghostly chatter to Arthur, and he smiled when he found the usual group dancing around and laughing to Pyke's guitar. 

Only thing that would make this better is beer, Billy Goodsmith lamented. Thirty-two, injured in a car crash, died in the hospital after a week of being in a coma. 

“Now that's one thing I can't do for you,” Arthur said, grinning slightly. “Though I could bring some beer for myself and you could all watch me get drunk on your behalf. Besides, didn't you get in a car crash because you were driving drunk?” 

You little devil child, Arthur! 

A shrug. “I thought you were glad you didn't kill anyone else while you were at it. Though you must have been living happily at the time you died since you didn't revert back to a younger age as a ghost. But hey, have any of you seen Francis?” 

Thought I saw him moping around the gate. Saw him trying to pet that stray dog earlier, the one that wanders in here sometimes. Seemed upset the dog wouldn't notice him. Sensitive soul, that one. 

“Thanks.” Arthur made is way through the headstones, him and them the only things in the cemetery with shadows. The moon was at his back, and he watched his shadow scout ahead of him, flowing over the ground. His own personal intangible ghost self. 

Anglais.

Arthur looked up to see Francis, the moonlight streaming right through him. So did the wind, but somehow his hair was tossing about his face anyway. Maybe there was a ghostly wind, because the silver-blond hair seemed to be whipping in the opposite direction from the wind that was blowing through Arthur's coat. 

“Frog,” he greeted, sitting himself atop the Frenchman's grave. “I think I found something.” 

A fair eyebrow rose, so different from his own caterpillar ones. Oh? 

“There's a spell, but it needs… it needs an object. One that was tied to you during life.” 

A musical-sounding hum, and it really wasn't fair the other could sound so elegant all the bloody time. Not fair. Not fair like it wasn't fair he was a ghost and Arthur was alive. Not fair like the fact that they were in love but could never be together, never touch one another. The one time they'd kissed had been a tingling cold sensation for one, a tingling warm sensation for the other, but no substance for either. 

Hands were held, but there was no weight or pull there, no comfort. All they had were words and smiles, delicate, incorporeal things. 

So why did the ghost still have such a tangible grip on Arthur's heart? 

I… might have something, Francis murmured. I wonder if… 

He knelt down before Arthur, on his own grave, and Arthur though mildly that one thing the Frenchman probably liked better about being dead was that he could never get his clothes dirty. 

A pale hand delved into the dirt, not disturbing a speck of it, and the Frenchman leaned forward till his elbow was gone, till all the way up to his shoulder was gone. 

Arthur rolled his eyes. “If you're trying to get something from your grave, you're gonna have to go all the way in, you know. You're buried six feet under.” 

The Frenchman glared at him, before heaving a sigh that displaced no air and diving into the ground, though not before Arthur's ears caught an annoyed, I hate doing this. 

A minute later and Francis was rising out of the dirt with a triumphant smile, holding out his hand. I wasn't sure if that would work… 

Arthur opened his hand, and Francis dropped something into it, something nonphysical that turned solid as soon as it left the ghost's hand. 

Arthur inspected the necklace curiously.

Family heirloom, Francis said. 

The necklace was a silver chain with a little silver bird on it. “Screw you, this isn't a family heirloom,” Arthur snorted.

Okay, you got me, Francis said, simpering and spreading his hands. I just liked it. A lot. For a totally inexplicable reason. 

“Hm,” Arthur said, turning the cold metal over in his hands. “Yes, I think this will do.”

You think so? Francis asked, and his smile made Arthur's heart beat too fast. 

“I-I'll bring the spellbook tomorrow night,” Arthur tried not to stammer. “W-we'll see if it works...” 

Francis's grin never faded.

* * *

_“How did you die?”_

_Cancer._

_“Cancer? Sounds painful.”_

_It was tragically boring. If I had to die, I would've liked to go out in a blaze of glory, you know?_

_“You don't wish you'd lived a long, happy life?”_

_But then I never would have met you!_

_“Oi. That's stupid.”_

_Love is never stupid, mon ami._

_“No, you're right. It's just you who's stupid.”_

_Non, it is you who is stupid._

_“Nope, definitely you.”_

_I beg to differ._

_“...We have such intellectual arguments.”_

_I guess it's both of us who are stupid, then._

_“Bloody hell.”_

_That is a rather disturbing mental image._

_“You're not supposed to imagine it, you nitwit!”_

_Beautiful flowers._

_“What?”_

_Didn't you just think of a beautiful flowers? See, that's a pleasant mental image, but you couldn't help having a mental image, could you?_

_“You're impossible.”_

_From this point on, I would prefer if you would curse by saying 'Beautiful flowers.'_

_“From this point on, I would prefer it if you would shut up.”_

_Francis's laughter lit up the graveyard, but Arthur's brought it to life._

* * *

The words of the spell were thick on Arthur's tongue, the spellbook heavy in his hands. But after he said the last word and closed the tome, looking up anxiously, he met Francis's wide eyes and felt a lightening. 

Anglais! Francis cried, throwing his arms around the other's neck where the necklace was hanging, laughing as the Brit tried to shove him away, hands going right through him, shivering at the cold. 

“Get off me, you twat! We don't even know for sure that it worked!” 

Let's test it out, shall we! said the grinning Frenchman, tails of his long jacket twirling as he turned, flapping as he ran toward the edge of the graveyard, whooping. 

“Get back here!” Arthur yelled, jumping up to chase after him, slowed by the heavy book in his arms. 

When Francis ran across the cemetery's boarder without hindrance, he collapsed to his knees, laughing sobs without tears, a wild, exhilarated sound. 

“Twit,” Arthur muttered under his breath, but he was smiling nonetheless as he caught up, panting slightly. “However, this doesn't mean freedom for you. You're tied to the necklace now, which means you can only go a certain distance from it. Maybe a mile at most.” 

So I'm stuck forever within a mile of you? Francis asked, looking up through shoulder-length hair and smiling. I couldn't think of a more wonderful curse.

Arthur grumbled and tried to hit Francis on the back of the head. It didn't work, of course.

Now, Francis said, smile turning sadder as he remained staring into green eyes, if only I could kiss you… 

“I'm afraid you'll have to wait till I die, for that,” Arthur said, looking down and fiddling with the silver bird that now lay against his chest. “Hope you don't mind waiting, 'cause I don't particularly want to kill myself.” 

For you, mon amour, I'd wait forever.

* * *

The other students at the university all thought Arthur was crazy. “Traumatic childhood,” they whispered. “Made himself an invisible friend because he had no one else. Have you heard the way he talks to himself? He has entire arguments and conversations, sometimes cracks up for no reason. Gives me the creeps.” 

“Schizophrenic,” whispered some. “Thinks he can communicate with the dead. Did you hear? He told Bobbi that her brother loved her and didn't blame her for what happened, that she couldn't have done anything and he was happy for the life he had. Had Bobbi in tears. Crazy fuck, that one.” 

“Did you hear about that Arthur kid? That he does his homework in the graveyard? Geez, what a sociopath. He doesn't even have any family or friends buried there.” 

They're whispering about you, Francis told him. 

“Let them,” Arthur snorted. “I'm used to it. They did that in high school, too. In middle school. In elementary school, even. Hell, they've always done that.” 

Except now I'm with you, Francis said. 

“Yes,” Arthur smiled. “You are.” 

I don't like the way they whisper about you, Anglais. I don't like the way they look at you.

“I honestly don't notice any more.”

I still don't like it.

“You'll get over it.” 

An impalpable hand reached to brush through blond hair. Anglais… 

“What?” 

I love you. 

“Yeah, it's pretty obvious.” 

Oi! You're supposed to say that you love me, too! Don't you love me, Anglais? 

“Of course I do, you nitwit. If I didn't, I would've tossed this necklace long ago.” 

How reassuring… 

“Cheer up, frog. You get to watch me bathe and get dressed all the time because there's nothing I can do to stop you. I don't see why you should be complaining.” 

Your body is admirable, it's true. It would be so much better if I could touch you, though… 

“You are in such a hurry to see me die, aren't you?” 

A sunny silver smile. Only a little bit, I promise you… 

“Hmph. Maybe once I become a doctor I'll figure out how to live forever, and then what will you do?”

You want to be a children's doctor. You're going to be too busy saving their lives to figure out how to live forever. You softy. 

“Well, if I pursue magic on the side...” 

Even the Sorcerer Supreme wasn't immortal, Anglais. There's no way you could ever be. 

“I knew it was a bad idea to let you convince me to read Alfred's comic books…” 

Don't worry, I'll make it up to you by helping you study for that upcoming exam.

“Ugh, don't remind me!” Hands gripped blond hair, tugging. “I am so going to die...” 

You're not going to die, mon amour. Not from an exam, anyway.

* * *

_Beep, beep, beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep._ The girl's hear stopped. 

Am I dead? the girl asked, sitting up and blinking. She looked down at her prone, sickly body left behind her, then down at her transparent hands. I'm dead, aren't I?

“I'm afraid so,” Dr. Kirkland said, kneeling down next to her. “I'm sorry.”

She looked up at him with wide, silver, used-to-be-brown eyes. Doctor! You're still alive! But you can see me? Will my mommy be able to see me? Can I speak to her? 

Dr. Kirland shook his head. “I'm sorry, Bella. I'm one of the very, very few who can see the dead.” 

Oh, she said, looking down, ghostly tears welling in her eyes. Her fists clenched, shoulder shaking. What will happen to me? I'm scared! What happens to me now that I'm dead?!

“I wouldn't know,” Dr. Kirkland murmured. “But maybe you should ask him,” he gestured behind him to tall man with wavy silver hair down to his shoulders, a long coat. 

My name is Francis, the man said, kneeling down and holding out his hand to the girl. I've been dead for years now. You do not need to worry, mon chère. Being dead takes some getting used to, but it is not scary. You'll be okay. 

He held out his hand, and, hesitantly, she took it.

* * *

A plane crash, Arthur grumbled, running a hand back through silver locks, all the wrinkles gone from his face. I can't believe I died in a bloody _plane crash._

Lived to the ripe age of fifty-one, though, Francis remarked. Not bad. And you aged well, almost like a fine wine. Except for your eyebrows. I hadn't though they could possibly get any more bushy, but you just kept proving me wrong. 

Arthur glared at him. You—

Hush, Francis grinned, pressing a finger to silver, teenage lips that frowned against the digit. I've been waiting thirty-seven years to kiss you. 

He ducked his head forward, pressing his lips against the Brit's, arms wrapping around the other's waist, pulling him close for the first time. 

Hm, Arthur murmured into the kiss. Your lips aren't cold anymore…


	6. GerPru: Stargazing AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** ok but imagine your otp stargazing while person b is snuggled into person a's side and tells them how much their existence means to them

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought about writing a different pairing to break up the every-other pattern I've got going here, but then I was just like, _Naaaahhh…_
> 
> And I'm still caught up in the desire to write something beautiful. And probably still failing at it. Whatever? Lol though, all these little one-shots keep ending up cute. Even though I'm kinda more into angst than into fluff and cuteness. How does this keep happening?
> 
>  _Sternennacht_ : German for “Starry night”

* * *

**Sternennacht**

* * *

_Ba-dumm._

_Ba-dumm._

_Ba-dumm._

Gilbert could feel the resonance of Ludwig's heartbeat against his ear. 

_Ba-dumm._ Gilbert smiled. _Ba-dumm._ The first time he'd ever laid his head on Ludwig's chest, the other man's heart had been hammering out a frantic crescendo, his breathing fast and shallow, and Gilbert had known that Ludwig was feeling the same terrible, monstrous butterflies in his chest that Gilbert was feeling in his. 

They didn't even feel like butterflies—more like Atlas moths. The female ones. But with razor-edged wings. Gott, Gilbert had been so nervous he'd felt like the gigantic moths were going to beat his heart out of his throat. Realizing that Ludwig probably felt the exact same way only seemed to make the moths beat their wings faster, harder. 

But Gilbert and Ludwig had been together for three years, now, and the initial Atlas moth-wing love had dispersed, broken down to those cute little white butterflies that tickled lightly, tickled Gilbert into fond, small smiles that felt like they'd eventually rot his teeth they were so sweet. And when Ludwig returned the smile, blue eyes bright and soft as bluebird feathers, the little white butterflies in Gilbert's chest would tickle him into quiet laughter and he'd squeeze Ludwig's hand and feel the warmth flow through him. 

Gilbert and Ludwig had been together for three years now, and when Gilbert laid his head on Ludwig's chest, the other man's heartbeat was strong and slow and calm, his breathing deep. In a relaxed state, Ludwig's heart only beat about thirty times a minute, and each breath lasted several seconds, the guy was so fucking _fit._ Gilbert loved it, though, the gentle rise and fall of Ludwig's chest, in and out like the tide. He loved the pauses in between beats that made each pulse of life just that much more thrilling.

Yes, Gilbert thought, turning his head slightly to press a kiss against the reverberating throb beneath his lover's shirt. He liked this kind of love much better. 

Ludwig hummed, the sound vibrating through Gilbert's head, and he snickered and pushed himself up slightly to look down at the younger man, suddenly aware of the water that had soaked into his clothes from the grass they were lying on as the breeze pressed the wet fabric to his skin. He shivered, only partly from the cold.

“Hey,” Ludwig murmured softly, looking at him with fond eyes.

“Hey yourself,” Gilbert replied.

The line of Ludwig's lips eased upwards, and he turned his gaze back to the galaxy spread above them, eyes reflecting the darkness and stars. 

The night sky was even more beautiful reflected in Ludwig's eyes, Gilbert thought. Maybe because he felt he actually had a chance of reaching the stars, there. 

Ludwig looked so perfect, lying there in the dark with his arms crossed behind his head, O-type eyes turned to the star-studded black swath of space like he was reading the secret to life engraved there. Or like he was counting each pinprick of light and cataloging what type of celestial body he thought it to be, which Gilbert wouldn't put it past him to attempt.

Smiling, Gilbert rested his head against Ludwig's chest again, his hand idly tracing over defined abs beneath soft fabric. Soft, thin fabric that Ludwig's body heat was seeping through, so that Gilbert felt like a composition of juxtaposition, warmth against one cheek and cool night air against the other, one hand sliding beneath cotton to press against the smooth skin beneath, the other arm pinned beneath him against the rough, wet grass. 

_Ba-dumm._ Gilbert smiled, eyes closed. 

_Ba-dumm._

_Ba-dumm._

_Ba-dumm._

He'd open his eyes every now and then to glance up at Ludwig's face, each time finding the other man absorbed in the starry night sky. Gilbert frowned, finally rolling over slightly so he could look upwards as well, wondering what it was that Ludwig seemed to find so fascinating. Maybe he really was counting all the stars and planets and whatever other things were up there. Airplanes. Satellites. Who knew. 

Gilbert stared at the night sky with narrowed eyes. Okay, so it was dark and had pretty lights, but it wasn't that awesome. The only thing awesome about it was how much Ludwig seemed to love it. Gilbert would rather stare at Ludwig. The night sky held his attention for a few minutes, at best, but the man next to him could hold his attention for hours. For all of eternity, maybe.

“Hey,” Gilbert said, turning and poking Ludwig in the side with a pale finger. “What're you looking at that's so fascinating?” 

Ludwig glanced at him, then removed a hand from behind his head to gesture at the starry night. “I should think it would be obvious,” he murmured in his deep voice that always spread warmth right down to Gilbert's bones. He shivered, and not at all from the cold. 

“Well, yeah, but what do you see?” he pressed, grabbing the muscled arm and pulling it down to be his headrest as he turned his gaze upwards again, still frowning. “Because all I see are a bunch of stars that are way less awesome than me, but obviously you see something different, because it's enough to keep you staring at _it_ instead of at _me._ ” 

Ludwig huffed a laugh, and Gilbert poked him again, whining. “Come on, I'm serious! I am awesome and deserve admiration, but all of yours is being showered elsewhere, and I want to know why.” 

Amused blue eyes turned thoughtful as Ludwig turned his head to look upwards again, lips tightening and brows drawing together. Gott, Ludwig's face got so intense when he was thinking, all the lines hardening, and he always looked like he was planning to murder someone, but Gilbert loved the expression anyways. 

Didn't mean he didn't tease him for it, though. 

“Yes, Mr. Murder Face?” Gilbert prompted, lips quirking into a smirk. “How long you going to mentally killing people in your head before you find an answer in all the blood and guts that will make sense to humans?” 

Ludwig snorted, glancing at him, then back up at the colossal garden of stars above them. He pursed his lips. 

“And there goes the Queen of England,” Gilbert grinned. “Shot twice through the back of the head with a sniper rifle. _Thud!_ She hits the floor, already dead.” 

“I have nothing against the Queen of England,” Ludwig pointed out, giving him a confused look.

“I'm sure you have nothing against any of the homicide victims in your head,” Gilbert tossed back, smirking. 

“You're morbid,” Ludwig informed him.

“Your _face_ is morbid,” Gilbert retorted. With a smirk, because he'd totally won that. Because he was awesome. 

Ludwig sighed. “I just…” he looked back up at the starry night sky again, for only the millionth time. “Don't you feel freer at night? Without the limitations of the day?” 

Gilbert blinked. “Say what?” 

Ludwig gestured at the sky with the hand not pinned by Gilbert's head. “You can see so much _farther_ at night. During the day, we can only see a few miles up, only within the Earth's atmosphere, aside from the sun and the moon, and nothing else but blue. But at night, it's like the lid is taken off the box, and suddenly we can see, even with just the naked eye, stars and galaxies up to 2.5 million _lightyears_ away. Which is also seeing 2.5 million years into the past, since it took that long for the light from those stars to reach us. So we see them as they were 2.5 million years ago, not as they were now. Isn't that just...” 

Ludwig glanced at him again, lips pursing in that oddly adorable way, though his eyes were bright with wonderment. “Don't you think that's amazing? That suddenly we can see so far, that suddenly the world isn't limited to just _us_ anymore. To see that there's so much more out there to discover that we don't yet know about. So much that exists that we won't ever know about.” 

His expression was like a child's, then, and Gilbert felt his heart melt a little. “I guess so,” he murmured, trying to see the night sky with Ludwig's eyes. He squinted for several moments, then sighed, letting his head relax back against his lover's arm that was much too muscular to make that good of a headrest. “All I see though are shades of color. Which I guess that's why you're studying astrophysics and I'm studying European history, and why you're probably going to become a famous scientist and I'm probably going to spend my life working as a barista. Though working as a bouncer might be more fun, because I'd at least get to kick people out. Can't do that as a barista.” 

Ludwig hummed, curling his arm and pulling Gilbert close to him again, making the smaller man yelp and struggle a bit before laughing and settling his head back down on the other man's chest.

_Ba-dumm._

_Ba-dumm._

_Ba-dumm._

He buried his nose in Ludwig's shirt, closing his eyes and breathing in the scent of the grass they were lying on mixed with the scent that was so distinctly _Ludwig,_ cologne and sweat and iron from the necklace he was wearing all the time—the necklace that Gilbert had given him on the first-year anniversary of their relationship. He'd never taken it off. 

Smiling, Gilbert's hand closed around the matching pendant around his own neck. He rubbed his thumb over the points, the edges, the crown and royal cipher engraved on its face. 

The Iron Cross had been a Prussian military decoration instituted in 1813 by Frederick William III for distinguished service in the Prussia War of Liberation. It was really a shame that the honor of it had been tarnished by the Nazis during World War II, when the badge was engraved with a swastika. 

A West German statute of 1957 permitted the Iron Cross to be worn only with the swastika removed. Gilbert though had found two modeled on the original Prussian design, and it just… felt right, to wear it. Maybe because he'd been fascinated by Prussian history since he was a kid. 

Not to mention, it looked damn good hanging around Ludwig's neck. 

It was symbolic of their relationship, more than anything, Gilbert felt, in some way he couldn't really explain. But he knew enough about Prussian history that he could lecture anyone on the subject for hours—and Ludwig had probably heard enough about Prussia from Gilbert to do the same—to distract anyone from the real reason for wearing the medal. It was… a connection. To the past. To each other…

Gilbert scoffed at himself, shaking his head against Ludwig's chest. Gott he was sentimental.

“Hm?” Ludwig asked, though is gaze was still on the stars. 

Gilbert just shook his head again, sighing contentedly, arm draped over his lover tightening slightly before relaxing again. Maybe he was sentimental, but at least Ludwig loved him for it. 

_Ba-dumm._

_Ba-dumm._

_Ba-dumm._

_Ba-dumm._

_Ba-dumm._

Pulsating life. Alive and here, right now. 

Gilbert smiled tremulously at the paradoxical strength and fragility of it. 

“Hey, Ludwig?” 

“Hm?” 

Gilbert pushed himself up to look at him. “I don't care if I have to be a barista for my entire life.”

“You won't be a barista for your entire life, Gilbert,” came the amused reply. 

“No, I mean,” Gilbert said. “I mean that I don't care if the rest of my life is shit, just as long as I have you. Because if I have you then it's not shit.” 

Ludwig looked at him, then, blue eyes bright and piercing and soft and waiting all at once. 

Gilbert took a deep breath, feeling it catch slightly in his throat as the pressure there built and built and Gilbert wanted Ludwig to know. He needed him to know. 

“But you know, right?” Gilbert pressed on, feeling a hint of desperation. There was a lump in his throat but he spoke past it. “You know how much your existence means to me. You know that I used to be so angry and bitter and hiding it behind laughter and grins and pomposity, you must have known because you seemed to see right through all of it. I would be laughing, and you'd just keep looking at me like you were waiting for me to just stop faking already and break down crying or yelling or just say what I was actually thinking because you wouldn't accept me as anything less or anything more than I actually am. 

“And I...” Gilbert looked down, smiling wryly. “And I was so afraid that there wasn't actually anything _there_ , underneath all the pomp and bluster, the smirks and the arrogance and the snide remarks. It was all I'd ever had to define myself. But every time you looked at me, you just had this look that said, 'I know you can be better. I know that you're better than this.'” 

A dry, humorless chuckle. “And I wanted to be, I really did, because I wanted you to look at me the way everyone else did, with admiration or frustration or both, but you _wouldn't_. Gott verdammt you, you stubborn ass.” A real laugh, this time. 

“You confused the hell out of me. And then in that general ed English class we shared, creative writing or whatever, I honestly don't know how we got into that class, but you read this story about your dog, and I guess the professor must have made you and you didn't want to do it, because it was this really funny, tragic story, but you read it in this deadpan voice, and the whole class was cracking up throughout and then in tears or nearly in tears by the end, but your face stayed straight and serious the entire time. 

“And then, after class, I think said that, wow, that was some dog, that's too bad it disappeared and never came back, and you were just like, 'I never had a dog. I always wanted one, though. I would've been less lonely. Blackie was a figment of my imagination, and I lost her the day I grew up and realized an imaginary dog was never going to make anything better.' And then you walked away and I was confused.” 

Gilbert shook his head, grinning wryly. “Gott, you gave me a fucking headache for two days trying to puzzle out what the hell you seemed to have been trying to tell me. 

“And in that creative writing class, I always used to write those terrible stories about me being awesome—sheiße they were awful things. But after that two-day headache, I ended up writing this story about the first time I got beat up in school for looking different, and when the professor convinced me to read it aloud, afterwards half the class was crying and the other half looked like someone had kicked their puppy, but you were just sitting there with this tiny little _smile_ on your _Gottverdammten_ face.”

Gilbert's lips twitched upwards, though his eyes stayed down. “And after class I stalked up to you and demanded what the hell your fucking problem was, and you just gave me that little, mysterious smile and asked me out for coffee. 

“And I was about to say no, what the fuck was wrong with you, but then somebody bumped into you and knocked your books out of your arms, and you started yelling at them in German and they scrambled to their feet and ran away with this look on their face like they were going to piss themselves with fear, and I was clutching my sides with laughter, and when you finally calmed down and turned to me to apologize I changed my mind and said yes. Best damn decision I ever made in my life. 

“I just...” Gilbert was smiling softly as he plucked at Ludwig's shirt, not meeting his eyes. “I don't think you understand just how much you mean to me. How much you've done for me. Because I swear the world became technicolor after the first time you full-out smiled at me, and you let me sob my heart out into your shirt until it was soaked and then you made me really happy by taking it off and then not putting it back on for like an hour while you waited for it to dry. 

“And you had my order memorized after two coffee dates, and you let me talk at you till my tongue goes numb and you somehow amazingly never seem to get annoyed at me for it, and you say the sweetest things and _sheiße_ are you a fantastic kisser, and I love the way you scare people and one day you'll be yelling at someone for being late to class or for falling asleep during a lecture but then the next day you'll be helping them with their math homework.

“I love that you enjoy cooking and cleaning, and that you wear that ridiculous, frilly pink apron I gave you as a joke that I never actually ever expected you to wear, but it was the best thing ever when you did, and you were all nonchalant about it too when I looked at you in shock and said in disbelief, 'You're actually wearing that thing?' and you were just like, 'What? You gave it to me, didn't you? And it's a functional apron. Why wouldn't I wear it?'” A laugh. 

Gilbert was smiling down at his pale hands twisting in his lap. “And I love how nerdy you are and your strange obsession working out at the gym that I am definitely not complaining about. And I love the way you stare at the boring night sky like it's one of the most fascinating things in the world.”

He'd glance over at Ludwig, who was watching him attentively, then immediately away, fighting down embarrassment. “I love the way you always lick off the melted ice cream that drips over my fingers, and the way you kick me out of the bedroom at 7:30 sharp every morning because you need to make the bed, and the way you come into the bathroom and steal my toothpaste for yourself when I'm trying to brush my teeth, and the way you spend forever in front of the mirror each morning slicking back your hair but let me mess it up for you when we're getting ready to fall asleep, and the way you always remember where I left my keys and the way you kiss me whenever I say something weird that doesn't really make sense and these are probably the most stupid and cliché reasons to be in love _ever_ , but you're still smiling at me so I guess it's okay?” 

Gilbert finally paused for breath, teeth worrying at his lower lip, barely daring to look at his lover's face. 

And then there was an arm around his waist and he was suddenly pulled onto Ludwig's chest. He yelped, eyes widening as he looked down at the other man, saying, “Hey! What the hell was that for?” 

Ludwig just stared up at him. A blush started creeping up Gilbert's cheeks, and he looked away again. “Well if you're not going to say anyth—oi!” he jerked as he felt a kiss on his nose, and he looked down in surprise at the smug Ludwig. 

Raising his torso slightly off the ground, Ludwig kissed him again, this time on the corner of the mouth. 

“I love you, too,” Ludwig said, eyes full of stars, face full of earnestness.

The blush was creeping strong along Gilbert's face, but he managed to snark out a, “What? I give you an entire epic monologue and all you have to say in response is four words?” 

Ludwig rolled them over so he was straddling Gilbert's waist, peppering lazy kisses along the other man's jaw. “You know I'm not very good with words,” he murmured. 

Gilbert hummed, relaxing under Ludwig's ministrations, tilting his head back to allow better access. “What about the story about the dog you never had?” 

“A rare exception,” came the low reply, accompanied by a small nip of teeth and a soothing tongue. “I'm a man of action first and foremost, I assure you.” 

“Oh?” Gilbert asked, wiggling his eyebrows and grinning, laughing when Ludwig rubbed their noses together. “Show me, then.” 

“Not here.” Ludwig stood up, making Gilbert gasp from the sudden absence of body heat, but when he offered a hand to pull Gilbert to his feet he took it. 

“Let's go inside,” Ludwig said. “My back is soaked with dew.” 

“Yeah, mine too,” Gilbert laughed, grinning and poking the other man in the side. “No thanks to you. Rhyme not intended!”

Ludwig raised an eyebrow. 

“Just kidding, rhyme totally intended,” Gilbert amended, smirk curling his lips.

Ludwig chuckled, and the two of them turned to leave the park, but not before one of them kissed the other, though neither could of told you who initiated it.

They walked back to their shared apartment hand-in-hand, stars twinkling unnoticed in the dark expanse of firmament above them.

* * *

Later that night, Gilbert laid his head on Ludwig's bare chest, content and relaxed, their legs intertwined, fingers rubbing idle patterns on an iron pendant warmed by skin.

_Ba-dumm._

_Ba-dumm._

_You're mine._

_I'm yours._

_You're mine._

Gilbert closed his eyes and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Ba-dumm_ is one of the German onomatopoeias for a heart beating. Along with _bumm bumm_ and _poch poch_. (In English we usually use _thump thump, ba boom, ba bump,_ or _lub-dub_.) Check out the Wikipedia webpage for Cross-linguistic onomatopoeias! It's really interesting :) 
> 
> O-type stars are very hot and extremely luminous, with most of their radiated output in the ultraviolet range, though to the human eye they appear blue. These are the rarest of all main-sequence stars. 
> 
> The information on the Iron Cross came from the Encyclopædia Britannica website. 
> 
> Someone remind me that the next time I write a GerPru drabble, I need to write it from Ludwig's point of view, lol. I keep doing Gilbert's.


	7. Spamano: Impromptu Pretend Date AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** imagine that you’ve been stood up by your douche of a boyfriend on date night and the waitress keeps asking if you’re ready to order but you keep asking for more time hoping that he’s just late. people are starting to look at you with those apologetic looks like they know and you start to feel worse and worse about the whole situation but as you decide to just get up and leave, this boy you’ve never seen sits down explaining loudly “sorry i’m so late, babe, traffic is crazy right now.” and he quietly adds, “i’m Michael. just go with it, yeah? whoever didn’t bother to show up is a dick.” and so you do go with it because he’s being sweet and trying to save you (and plus he’s the cutest thing you’ve ever seen) and as you’re leaving the restaurant after the best non-planned date ever, he asks you out for real this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's for my little sis (okay, so she's not so little anymore, but she's still younger than me so I still reserve the right to call her that) because Spamano is her OTP :3

* * *

**Words Are (Not Always) Weapons**

* * *

Antonio was cha-cha-ing down the sidewalk, humming to himself and smiling uncontrollably—Latin Dance rehearsal always left him like that—when something made his dancing pause and his smile falter. 

This city street was lined with restaurants, and they all had outdoor seating areas along the sidewalk so diners could enjoy the warm night air of summer and the romantic atmosphere of the dark sky and city lights. The French restaurant he was passing was obviously a couples' restaurant, tables for two lining the walkway, all of them filled except for one. 

There was a man sitting there in a black suit and deep red dress shirt, glaring down at the watch on his wrist, dark auburn hair hiding his downcast eyes, but it was easy to see that he was gnawing on his lower lip and that he wasn't fiddling with the watch because it was uncomfortable. 

And it was easy to see why, as the waiter—hey, that was Francis! So this was the restaurant he worked at!—glided over and asked, with a bright smile but pitying eyes, “Are you ready to order yet, mon ami? Because if not, there are other couples waiting for a table...” 

The man didn't look up. “Just a little more time,” he muttered, voice surprisingly deep. 

“Of course, mon ami,” Francis said, still smiling, but as he glided away he cast a pitying look over his shoulder. Couples at nearby tables had noticed the man's predicament, as well, and were casting him apologetic looks. 

It was such a shame for such a cutie to be stood up by his date, and Antonio barely spared a moment to wonder if he was dressed correctly for such a restaurant—black dance pants and shoes paired with a ruffled white tuxedo Latin dance shirt, probably formal enough-looking—before striding over to the man's table and taking the seat across from him. 

“Sorry I'm so late, babe, traffic is crazy right now,” Antonio said, grinning sheepishly as the surprised man looked up in wide-eyed surprise—and _maldito_ but those confused and angry amber eyes were quite possibly the most gorgeous things that Antonio had ever seen.

It suddenly occurred to Antonio that maybe that man wasn't gay, and, Dios, what if he was homophobic? Except he couldn't be because sitting at the other tables of the restaurant were gay and lesbian couples as well as straight ones, and the man wouldn't have come to eat here if he were homophobic, so it was probably okay. But there was still the problem if the man were straight, and he'd been waiting for a girl and had said to the waiter 'She'll be here,” or something like that. But then, the waiter was Francis, and Francis was one of Antonio's best friends and Antonio knew that he'd go with it. 

The man across from him opened his mouth, a flash of fury in those amber eyes, before Antonio leaned forward and whispered, “I'm Antonio. Just go with it, okay? Even if you're not gay. Whoever stood you up is a dick. Or a bitch.”

Antonio leaned back, smiling, and the man just blinked those amber at him. 

Antonio suddenly realized that he didn't even know the man's name. 

“Are you ready to order, mes amis?” Francis said from where he'd appeared next to them, pen and pad in hand, blue eyes laughing. 

Antonio was about to answer, but the other man beat him to it. 

“Yes,” the man said, glancing at Antonio before looking back at the waiter, “I think we're ready.” 

The man ordered, and Antonio, having not had time to look at the menu, said brightly, “I'll have what he's having!” 

When Francis had left—not before failing to wink at him, though, because he was _Francis_ , after all—the man who Antonio had just “saved” narrowed his eyes at him.

Antonio smiled encouragingly.

“For the record, I'm not gay,” the man said. “I'm bi. And, before you ask—because I know you're going to—my name is Lovino Vargas.”

* * *

Lovino looked at his watch. 

It was a nice watch, expensive. Probably very expensive. His grandfather had gifted it to him, so it was probably I-don't-even-want-to-know-how-expensive-this-was expensive. His grandfather had gifted him I-don't-even-want-to-know-how-expensive-this-was expensive suits, too, but he wasn't wearing any of them. It was a nice suit, sure, but it wasn't Armani or anything, and he'd forgone the tie. All that kind of formal shit gave him a headache. 

He was wearing the watch, though. It was analog, with gears visible in the background. Some kind of steampunk look. It was hard to read. Who even read analog clocks, these days? 

He glared at the watch. The stupid ridiculously expensive watch that he'd worn for this somewhat formal date with his girlfriend, and she hadn't shown up yet. 

It took him a few moments to read the watch, and then to read it again just to double check that he hadn't gotten the hour and minute hands mixed up. Stupid fucking expensive steampunk watch. 

She was twenty-five minutes late. 

At least the black leather strap of the watch was comfortable, Lovino thought, as he fiddled with it. It didn't have connecting metal bits that caught the fine hairs on his wrist. Not like his only other watch, the stupid cheap one. That's why he'd worn the expensive one, because it was comfortable.

It was damn hard to read, though. After a few moments, Lovino reaffirmed that she was twenty-seven minutes late.

Stupid steampunk analog clocks. As if the hands weren't annoying enough, the gears in the background had to make the watch face even more complicated. The gears weren't just for show, either. They moved with the watch hands. Because apparently one could never have too much going on a watch face. 

And it wasn't even complicated in a useful way. The cheap watch was digital, easier to read, showed more information. The hour and minute. The seconds. The date. It had an alarm, too. If the expensive watch had an alarm, Lovino didn't know how to work it. 

If he'd known, though, the alarm would be going off by now, because she was thirty minutes late. 

Not that he needed an alarm on his watch, because there were alarms going off in his head. There was no way traffic could be _that_ bad. She was always punctual, when she wanted to be. Hell, she was usually early, when she cared about something. It was one of the things he'd always admired about her. 

It had taken him so long to gather the courage to ask her on a date. It had taken much prodding from his younger brother. 

“Asking girls out is easy!” Feliciano had said, smiling brightly like he always did. “You compliment them and saying something flattering, and then you say, 'I really like you, would do me the honor of going on a date with me?' and then they either say yes or no! And if they say no, you know not to waste time on them anymore, and if they say yes then you get a wonderful date!” 

Easy for Feliciano to say. Feliciano got along with everybody. Everybody liked him. He went on lots of dates, and though none of them really stuck, Feliciano didn't seem to mind. He just went out with someone else. 

Girls thought he was cute, it seemed. Going out with him was a fun thing to do once in a while, if you wanted a cute, fun date that wouldn't get serious. He would go on dates, but he was never officially dating anybody, and when he went out with one girl one day and another girl the next, it wasn't really cheating, even though there'd been no breakup. There just seemed to be this tacit understanding about Feliciano that he didn't cheat—he wasn't a womanizer or anything—he just really, really liked people. He liked talking with people. He liked making people smile. 

“We just go out and relax and have a fun time!” Feliciano said, smiling brightly like he always did. “And sometimes we kiss and stuff afterwards!” 

Lovino honestly, for the life of him, was not sure if Feliciano had ever actually had sex with anyone or not. He wouldn't be surprised if he had, but he wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't, so he just decided not to bother thinking about it. 

“Asking a girl out is easy!” Feliciano had said, smiling brightly like he always did. 

Maybe it was for Feliciano, but Lovino had never been Feliciano. His perfect, little brother.

No, asking someone out was not easy for Lovino. Making friends was not easy for Lovino. Talking with people was not easy for Lovino. Unless he was yelling at them or arguing with them. That, that was easy. That was why he'd become a trial lawyer, in part. He got to yell at people and argue with them. He enjoyed it. He was good at it. He thinks sometimes he was born to do it. 

He'd always been a problem child, in school. But if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was how to find loopholes. He could find any loophole, hit the weak spot of any argument, target the weak point of any person. 

Maybe that was why most people had always hated him. He'd never been a bully, no, but he wasn't someone people messed with, either. You didn't mess with Lovino Vargas. People learned that the hard way. Words were his weapons, and he wielded them with an unmatched ferocity.

The bullies learned this the hard way in school. His fellow classmates learned this the hard way in college. His roommates kept switching out, until he'd ended up with a German potato-eating bastard who somehow managed to remain unfazed by just about anything. Lovino had found it amusing that Ludwig had appeared to get more frustrated at Feliciano's exaggerated acts of incompetence than at Lovino's belligerence. First time anyone had found Feliciano more annoying than him. 

And then he'd met the potato-eating bastard's pugnacious older brother, and realized why Ludwig was so unfazed by his shit. In order to antagonize him, Lovino regularly invited Feliciano over, and then watched and laughed his ass off while Ludwig tried to deal with Feliciano tripping on his untied shoe laces, getting tangled while trying to take his sweater off, splattering the kitchenette with tomato sauce, fainting, or whatever other ridiculous, somewhat grudgingly-admittably adorable things Feliciano did. 

Ludwig's older brother had been the first person Lovino had met that could go toe to toe with him. They'd dated for a little while, but then Gilbert had dropped out of college to join a hard metal band, and his and Lovino's paths didn't cross very often anymore. 

Especially not now that Lovino was a well-known, successful trial lawyer with his own private practice (he'd never handled teamwork or bosses very well). He was one of the best in the region, and he knew it. He had a reputation of making people cry in the courtroom. He may not win every case, but no lawyer could match him in temperament. 

Until she'd come along. Natalia Arlovskaya. Long, ashy blond hair. Piercing blue, almost violet-looking eyes. Sharp features, sharp movements, sharp voice. Her older brother was weird as fuck, but she was amazing. 

She and Lovino had clashed in the courtroom like wild tigers, all gnashing claws and teeth. Everyone else who'd been in the courtroom had left looking frazzled, like they'd been caught in a hurricane, but Lovino had felt invigorated. He hadn't even minded that he'd lost. Words were weapons, and it had been a worthy battle. 

Natalia was a force to be reckoned with, just like he was, and he'd never felt so alive. It didn't take many more interactions between them for Lovino to start feeling odd around her, his heart beating faster, his breath coming shorter, a thrill going through him every time he even thought about her.

“You're in love,” Feliciano told him, smiling brightly like he always did. “This is so great! You need to ask her out!” 

It had taken forever for Lovino to gather the courage to do so. He wasn't used to being afraid of anything, really (well, aside from bad cooking, nefarious-looking mustaches, and large dogs). And usually, if he was afraid, he could cover it in sarcasm and aggression. 

Not the best way to ask someone out, even he knew. Words had always been weapons, to him, never tools of seduction.

Finally, _finally_ he'd gathered up the courage to ask her, and it had gone surprisingly well, he'd thought. He hadn't babbled, bumbled, or otherwise mangled his wording. He hadn't blushed, fidgeted, or seemed otherwise nervous or timid. 

And she'd said yes. _Dio_ , she'd said yes. And they'd made plans. 

He'd dressed up. He'd been willing to go to this French restaurant, even though he liked Italian better. He'd been excited, anticipatory. He'd put on this why-the-fuck-did-you-waste-so-much-money-on-such-a-small-and-unnecessary-object watch. 

Which now said that she was forty minutes late. Or was it forty-one? Forty-two? It was so fucking hard to tell, with those analog hands on that steampunk gear background. 

She probably wasn't coming.

He wondered what she would have looked like in a nice dress. 

“Are you ready to order yet, mon ami?” the French douche of a waiter asked, for what must have been the _fiftieth goddamn time_. “Because if not, there are other couples waiting for a table...” 

“Just a little more time,” Lovino muttered, not looking up from his oh-god-why-do-I-own-this watch. He should give her at _least_ another five minutes, right? Maybe her older brother—what the fuck was his face—was being weird and possessive again.

“Of course, mon ami,” the waiter said, sounding way to suave and goddamn pitying, and he could hear the couples at the other tables around him murmuring about him and how fucking damn sad was that he'd been stood up like this, and—

The sound of a chair scraping, the table vibrating slightly.

“Sorry I'm so late, babe, traffic is crazy right now,” a voice—an unfamiliar voice—said, and Lovino looked up to see a man sitting there across from him, smiling. Green eyes, tanned skin, tousled brown hair. Ruffled white dress shirt. 

What. The. Fuck.

Leaning forward, the man whispered, “I'm Antonio. Just go with it, okay? Even if you're not gay. Whoever stood you up is a dick. Or a bitch.”

Antonio leaned back, smiling, and all Lovino could do was blink at him.

What. Even. Who the hell did this guy think he was and why the _fuck_ was he doing this? Did he think he was _helping him out?_

“Are you ready to order, mes amies?” the waiter said, appearing once again, and Lovino almost spat at him to fuck the hell off. 

“Yes,” Lovino said instead, glancing at Antonio before looking back at the waiter, “I think we're ready.” Because he was _hungry_ , damn it, and this Antonio bastard was apparently the kind of good-doing person who would pretend to be someone's date so they didn't have to walk alone out of a restaurant without eating trying not to let their face heat up with shame and embarrassment, and if it meant Lovino got to eat and keep his pride intact, well, he was all for it. 

And this Antonio was kinda cute, actually—did he purposefully leave the first few buttons of that shirt undone, or was that on accident, because it was looking pretty damn purposeful—so even if he turned out to be annoying, at least he was nice to look at, so this dinner probably couldn't go too horribly. 

Oh, and did Lovino mention that he was _hungry?_ He'd barely eaten any lunch, he'd been so excited about this date. 

And Lovino had decided what he wanted to order in the first five minutes of looking at the menu (thank you, Feliciano, for being so obsessed with food and teaching him about French dishes amongst many others), and then had had to stop looking at the menu because reading all the food descriptions was making his mouth water. 

“I'll have what he's having!” Antonio declared, brightly. Apparently he didn't know much about French cuisine. 

Lovino immediately wished he'd ordered escargot. See how the presumptuous bastard liked eating snails. 

A voice in his head, that sounded disturbingly like Feliciano, told him he should try to be nice to the man. He'd kind of saved him, after all. Wasn't that nice of him? 

Lovino sighed, narrowing his eyes at this Antonio fellow. Who just smiled at him. Why the fuck was he smiling like that?

“For the record, I'm not gay,” Lovino told him matter-of-factly, though quietly. “I'm bi. And, before you ask—because I know you're going to—my name is Lovino Vargas.” 

“Lovino Vargas,” Antonio said, as if he were tasting the name on his tongue. His eyes seemed to light up, for some strange, unfathomable reason. “It is a pleasure to meet you! I guess I didn't introduce myself completely, huh? I'm Antonio Fernández Carriedo. I like to dance, sing, play the guitar, and travel a lot.” 

Lovino raised an eyebrow. “You're musical and into traveling, huh? Do you happen to know Gilbert Beilschmidt, by any chance?” Because that was just the first thing that popped into his head. 

He wasn't really expecting a positive answer, but Antonio beamed, nodding emphatically. “Sí, sí! He's one of my best friends! Along with Francis, who's actually our waiter today.” 

Huh, Lovino thought. It was a small world after all, wasn't it? 

Which immediately brought to mind Feliciano singing that _stupid fucking_ 'It's a small world after-fucking-all' song while skipping around and clapping, and Lovino strangled that memory brutally and shoved it back into the box of REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING MEMORIES DO NOT OPEN EXCEPT UNDER CIRCUMSTANCES WHERE YOU WANT TO MAKE YOURSELF HOMICIDALLY ANGRY.

“I met Gilbert at a concert,” Antonio said, still smiling. “How did you meet him?” And he actually looked interested, too.

“He was the older brother of my roommate in college,” Lovino said. 

Antonio's green eyes lit up. “You were Ludwig's roommate in college?! Oh, that's so cool! What a coincidence!”

“Yeah,” Lovino said. Coincidence. At least the man hadn't claimed it was something stupid like fate, or anything like that. That their star signs had lined up or shit. Lovino hated people like that, and he enjoyed crushing them and their petty beliefs. “I haven't spoken to him in a while. I know he got into his top choice for medical school. He's probably a doctor by now, huh?” 

“Sí, sí!” Antonio said, and holy shit, did the guy ever stop smiling? “He patched up my face after Gilbert broke my nose when we were in the mosh pit at that concert where we met!” 

Lovino stared at him. “You mean you became friends with Gilbert because he broke your nose at a concert and then took you to Ludwig to get it fixed up?” 

“Sí!” Antonio said, laughing. “I meet the best people in odd situations! Like Francis—I met him because his car had broken down in the middle of the road, and I stopped to help him push it to the side out of the way and lent him my phone so he could call a tow truck since his had run out of batteries. And then, since I was just on my travel bicycle that could fold up into a suitcase, I rode in the tow truck with him to the mechanic to get his car fixed, and then we went out to lunch while he waited.” Antonio was grinning like that was the coolest thing ever. “It was fun! I'd never ridden in a tow truck before! And we found this great little family coffee shop that serves the _best_ pumpkin spice lattes I have ever tasted. And it turned out Francis was really cool and we became fast friends!” 

_Dio_ , this guy was crazy. But Lovino's stomach was starting to growl fiercely, so there was no way he was going to leave before the food arrived and he'd eaten it. 

“And now I've met you pretending to be your date, and you're really cool, too!” Antonio grinned. 

“You don't even know anything about me,” Lovino pointed out, fighting the very strong urge to roll his eyes. Seriously, how simple-minded was this guy? 

“Not yet!” Antonio said cheerfully. “But we've got all this dinner for you to tell me about yourself!” He leaned back in his chair, smiling expectantly. 

Lovino sighed. He supposed trying to carry out a civil conversation—without devolving into any arguments—was the least he could do. Especially if he wanted to see if this guy would foot the bill. 

“There's not much to tell,” he said. “I'm a trial lawyer. I argue cases in court and yell at people a lot.” 

“You must have gotten along great with Ludwig!” Antonio laughed, seemingly delighted by this. 

“We got into surprisingly few yelling matches, given both our tendencies to incite such,” Lovino said, and he couldn't keep his lips from quirking slightly. “Mostly I yelled at him, and he didn't deem it worth his energy to yell back at me. He has a very odd set up pet peeves that I didn't seem able to hit.” Lovino found himself humming thoughtfully as he thought back to that time. “He probably would have yelled at me if I'd been messy, but I'm pretty clean and organized by nature, and it wasn't worth the effort to be mess just to frustrate him.” 

Antonio seemed to find this absolutely hilarious, for some odd reason. 

Lovino narrowed his eyes at him. “What's so funny?” 

“Imagining you and Ludwig as roommates!” Antonio said, grinning at him. “I wish I'd been there to see that!” 

“Yeah, well, you can always ask Gilbert about it,” Lovino said, and shrugged. “He hung out a lot. Me and him dated for a time.” 

“You did?” Antonio said, green eyes widening, and then he was laughing again. “Oh, the two of you must have gotten into so much trouble!” 

Lovino found his lips quirking again. “We got kicked out of about three-fourths of the restaurants we visited.” 

Antonio was laughing so loudly that Lovino was surprised they weren't currently being kicked out of _this_ restaurant. 

Which reminded him—”Ugh, when's the food going to get here?” he said, barely able to keep the complaining tone from suffusing his voice. He was _hungry_. Not _starving_ , no, he was a lawyer and too pedantic about wording for that. But still, his stomach was… well, not happy with him at the moment. 

He suddenly wished he'd stayed at home and eaten pasta with his little brother. Feliciano was many things, and a good cook was definitely one of them. 

“It'll get here,” Antonio said, smiling reassuringly. “It's pretty busy here tonight, which is probably why it's taking so long. But I can vouch for sure that the food here is good!”

“Why, have you ever eaten here?” Lovino snorted. He highly doubted it—Antonio's order earlier had suggested otherwise.

“No,” Antonio said, affirming Lovino's assumption. “But Francis works here! Therefore it must be good! Francis is a great cook!” 

Lovino snorted again, once more fighting to keep from rolling his eyes. “Francis is a waiter here, not a cook.” 

“Yeah, but Francis has taste,” Antonio said, completely serious. “He knows his food, and he wouldn't work here if the food wasn't merveilleux.” The French word, obviously picked up from Francis, sounded strange in Antonio's slight Spanish accent. 

Lovino wanted to argue, but restrained himself. It wasn't important. Getting through this meal with this amiable stranger was more important than arguing, at the moment. 

_Words are not always weapons_ , he reminded himself. _They can be used for other things, too._

He wondered, if Natalia had shown up, if they would have argued the entire time, simply for the sake of argument, since they both loved it so much and were so good at it. He wondered if it would have gotten too heated.

“Well, I hope you're right,” Lovino said, instead of picking a fight. “Although admittedly, I'm so hungry right now that they could probably serve potatoes and brotwurst and I'd think it was delicious.” 

Antonio laughed, at that. “Cierto, cierto! Food always tastes better when you're hungry! I once went on a kayaking trip, and we'd been paddling for hours and were starving, and for lunch we had canned tuna on plain bread, and it was the most delicious thing ever. And I was just like, 'This is so good, why don't I eat this all the time?' And then when I had it for lunch on a normal day, I nearly gagged it was so bad.” Antonio laughed again. “I had to surreptitiously feed all the tuna I'd bought to my neighbors' cats!” 

Lovino found his lips quirking, despite himself. This was the third time during this conversation with the Spaniard. What the hell was wrong with him tonight?

He was saved from having to come up with a reply when the waiter—Francis, Antonio's friend—arrived with their meals, setting the bowls of soup in front of them. 

“Your _hors d'œuvre_ , mes amies,” Francis said, smiling like a creep. _“Bon Appétit!”_

And then Lovino was rather preoccupied with blissful, blissful bisque, and he had never tasted French food that was so good. Which of course probably said more about how hungry he was, than the actual quality of the soup itself. 

He finished fast, faster than Antonio, and then he just had to wait for the main course to arrive. Hopefully that wouldn't be too long. 

Antonio was taking his time eating the bisque, blowing on each spoonful before putting it into his mouth, and taking a moment to savor the flavor each time, his eyes alight. 

“This is quite good!” Antonio said, sipping another spoonful.

“Yeah,” Lovino agreed, instead of arguing. It would have been easy to argue, but he was trying not to do that tonight. He could argue with Natalia and yell at her once he saw her at work, chew her out for standing him up like this. 

“So, what do you do for a living?” Lovino asked, trying to make conversation and distract himself from the rant he was writing in his head to yell at Natalia the next day. He could work on the rant while trying—and likely mostly failing—to fall asleep that night. 

Antonio's eyes brightened again, and Lovino wondered at how they appeared to routinely brighten, but never seemed to dull in between. Surely they were not actually getting brighter each time, otherwise they'd be blinding right now. 

“A little bit of this, a little bit of that,” Antonio said, like that was somehow something to be proud of and excited about, that he didn't have a steady job. “I travel around and perform Latin dance numbers at venues around the country with a dance troupe, sometimes. Sometimes I play gigs with a band; I play guitar and sometimes sing. I give private dance and guitar lessons sometimes, too. My students are so cute!” he beamed, then, eyes twinkling. “Like Lili and Basch! I'm teaching them to play the guitar. Lili is a very eager and quick learner. Her older brother Basch can be surly at times—apparently he didn't want to learn how to play guitar—but I managed to get him interested, and he's quite dedicated once he puts his mind to something.” 

_Dio_ , Lovino thought, as he stared at Antonio, _how can any one man smile so damn much?_

Before he could get very far into imagining what would happen to Antonio's smiling face if he got turned into a zombie and his flesh started falling off, Francis arrived with their _plat principal_.

It took a moment for Lovino to banish the disturbing zombie imagery before he could start eating, but then the baguette and cheese and the meat course with vegetables and pasta commanded his full attention. 

Food, food was wonderful. Except when it was cooked by Feliciano's friend's friend Arthur, who Lovino was already planning a case against for the day he committed murder-by-terrible-food. He wasn't sure if he could convince a judge it was first degree murder, but he would definitely be able to convince them at least of second degree murder. 

“You look like you're planning a murder, there,” Antonio said, still cheerful to a fault, as he tore into a piece of bread. 

“No, just a murder trial,” Lovino said, which for some reason made Antonio laugh. Dio, did e _verything_ make that man laugh?

Well, probably not kicked puppies. Antonio didn't seem like a man who would laugh at abused cute things. Like lost kittens. He'd probably try to save them, and then laugh when they scratched him, and continue to insist they were adorable. 

Yeah, that seemed like the kind of man Antonio was. He seemed like the kind of person who would be hard to argue with simply because he refused to get angry. 

Lovino wondered what it would take to make Antonio angry. 

He was snapped out of that musing though when Antonio asked, “So, what do you want most out of life?” 

“What?” Lovino said, blinking at him. 

“What do you want most out of life?” Antonio asked, looking genuinely interested as he sipped his mineral water. 

Lovino frowned, shrugging. “Don't you think we don't know each other well enough to be discussing such deep questions?”

“Not at all!” Antonio said, grinning. “I think this is the perfect amount of knowing each other for such a question!” 

Lovino closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. He could argue his way out of answering the question. It would be easy to do so. 

But instead he just sighed and shrugged again. He just had to say enough to get the Spanish bastard off his back, anyhow. “A stable, lucrative job, which I already have. A watch that's neither crappy and cheap nor ludicrously expensive. A good argument every now and then. You?” He wasn't really interested, but, well. Making conversation, and all that. Making conversation without arguing. 

_Feliciano will be so proud of me for this,_ Lovino thought wryly. 

Antonio hummed and looked somewhere over Lovino's left shoulder, as if he hadn't already been thinking about his own answer to the question before he'd asked it. “I want someone to love,” he said finally, “and something beautiful to say.” 

It was all Lovino could do not to snort at that. Okay, sure, the first one—most people probably wanted that, or the other variation of wanting to be loved by someone. But the second? Wanting something beautiful to say? What the fuck was that? 

“Something beautiful to say,” Lovino repeated flatly, raising an eyebrow. 

“Sí,” Antonio said, smiling, as he poked another bite of his dwindling dinner with his fork and put it in his mouth, chewing and swallowing.

Lovino waited, but apparently Antonio wasn't going to say any more on the subject, and Lovino decided it really didn't matter and he really didn't care, so he wasn't going to press. 

Francis, ever with the impeccable timing, came to their table only a few minutes later to ask if they wanted desert. 

“Oui,” Antonio said, making Francis laugh. 

“What do you think,” Antonio said, turning to Lovino, “the _mousse au chocolat_ or the _crème brûlée?”_

“Your French accent is still atrocious, mon ami,” Francis informed him, smirking like the douchebag Lovino had deemed him within three seconds of hearing him talk for the first time. 

Antonio just shrugged gracefully and smiled. “I try, mi amigo! Which is more than can be said for you. You don't ever try to say anything in Spanish.”

“It's because I know I would sound terrible in comparison to you,” Francis said, winking. 

Lovino wanted to gag, like he used to do as a kid whenever he saw something that disgusted him. But he was an adult now, and a professional with a law degree, so he didn't. 

“You can't get better if you don't try!” Antonio protested, still in good humor. 

“The _crème brûlée,”_ Lovino cut in smoothly. (He'd never really liked chocolate. Feliciano liked to be dramatic and say that there was something terribly, horribly wrong with him because of that, but Lovino had argued him out of that notion each time. It had happened so often he practically had his defense memorized and could probably recite it in his sleep.)

Francis and Antonio looked at him in surprise.

“Your French accent is quite good,” Francis told him, looking rather shocked. 

It was a good look on the French bastard. Lovino allowed his lips to curl slightly in a smirk. 

He pondered whether to take the humble route and point out that he was Italian and Italian had similarities to French, but he decided instead to drawl, “Some of us are just talented, I guess,” which made Francis somewhat annoyed and Antonio laughed. 

That Spaniard dick seemed to laugh at everything he said. 

Lovino knew for _certain_ that he was, in fact, _not_ a funny person. There was no reason for Antonio to laugh at everything—or anything—that he said. 

“The _crème brûlée_ it is!” Antonio said, grinning, and well, he got a point for not asking Lovino something stupid, like 'What, you don't like chocolate?' or anything like that. 

Francis smiled slightly, nodded, and disappeared, and Antonio reached across the table to pat Lovino on the shoulder, still grinning. 

Grinning, grinning, grinning. Seriously, weren't the guy's cheeks aching something fierce by now? And why the hell did he feel the need to pat Lovino on the shoulder, anyway? They weren't actually on a date, there was no reason to be all touchy-feelsy. Lovino shifted away slightly, frowning.

“Hey, Lovino?” Antonio said, still fucking smiling, the bastard.

“Yes?” Lovino said warily, narrowing his eyes at the other man. 

“Can I call you Lovi?” 

“No,” Lovino said immediately. 

“But—”

“No,” Lovino said sternly. “No buts.” 

Antonio pouted. Like, actually fucking _pouted_. Dio, how old _was_ this guy? Lovino should probably ask that and make sure he wasn't on a fake date with someone way younger than him. 

“But—”

_“No. Buts,”_ Lovino ground out. 

“Okay, okay!” Antonio said, holding up his hands placatingly. “I just thought it would be cute!” 

Lovino was about to say something that likely would have been scalding, but Francis decided to show up at that moment with their dessert, smiling like a smug asshole. 

Lovino had to hand it to the Frenchman—his timing was impeccable. Yet again. Now if he could just work on not looking like such a pervert, then maybe he'd be somewhat tolerable. 

“Your dessert, mes amis,” he smiled. 

“Thanks, Francie!” Antonio grinned, and Lovino wanted to gag again. He'd never, ever understood nicknames. Ever. Unless they were rude ones that involved insults. 

Francis gave a little, gag-inducing bow and retreated again, leaving Lovino and Antonio alone with the rich vanilla custard and its topping of hard caramel.

Lovino and Antonio looked at each other over the dessert, and—Lovino's honestly not quite sure what it spurred it on—suddenly they were both reaching for their spoons and diving into the dish, trying to eat as much of it as they could before the other, stealing scoops from each other's spoons and trying to steal the scoops back. 

By the time the dessert was gone, Lovino belatedly realized he was laughing. 

When was the last time he'd laughed like this? 

After an exhilarating argument with Natalia, he remembered. But thinking about her didn't make him feel as bitter as it had earlier. His mood must have improved from his having eaten. 

Francis returned with the bill, looking oddly, terribly, _terrifyingly_ smug about something, and Lovino wonder briefly if he'd put something in the custard, but then disregarded that idea because Antonio had eaten the custard too, and Antonio was Francis's friend, so Francis probably wouldn't want to poison him or drug him or anything. 

Lovino and Antonio ended up splitting the bill equally.

When he stood up from the table and started to leave, Antonio quickly latched onto his elbow. 

Lovino glared and tried to shake him off. “What are you—!”

“We're a couple, remember?” Antonio said, smiling. “We should at least play it up until we're out of sight.” 

Lovino grumbled, but relented, letting the Spaniard hang on his arm as they walked a ways down the sidewalk. 

“Alright,” he said, turning to glare at the other man. “You can let go n—”

He was silenced by Antonio's lips on his. 

“Wh—wha—?” he stammered, when Antonio pulled back, smiling. Lovino touched his fingers to his lip in disbelief. “Did you—did you just _kiss me, you bastard?!”_

“It's not a date without a kiss, is it?” Antonio said, _still_ smiling, god _damn_ him. 

Lovino was about to start yelling at him, finally let loose that side of him that had been itching to yell and argue all night, but Antonio spoke before he could, saying brightly, “I really enjoyed that date with you! Would you be willing to go on another with me?” 

Lovino's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “You,” he said, staring incredulously. “You want to go on a _date_ with me?” 

“We kind of just went on a date,” Antonio pointed out, “but it wasn't an official one, since technically I was only pretending to be the date you'd be waiting for. But, since your date never showed up, I'm assuming you're not with them anymore, sí? So how would you like to go out with me on a real date, next time?” 

Antonio was smiling beautifully at him. 

_You don't need to say something beautiful_ , Lovino thought at him distractedly. _You're smile is more than e-fucking-nough._

“Uhm,” Lovino said, and internally cursed himself. He never said 'uhm,' not anymore. It had been drilled out of him when he was training to be a trial lawyer. “Yeah, sure.” 

_Why? Why did I just say that?_ he wondered, watching in a strange sense of detachment as Antonio cheered and quickly pulled out a slip of paper from his pocket and a pen—why the hell did he have those with him and had they been there the whole time?—and scribbled down his phone number and the clichéd phrase, call me! and handed it to him, still beaming like Lovino had the fucking sun shining out of his ass. 

And then Antonio pulled him into a hug, squeezing slightly—not to an uncomfortable degree, just enough to feel… reassuring? Welcoming? Enthusiastic? Warm?

Lovino's mind as abuzz as Antonio let go, asked him if he could get home okay, and, assured that he would, left in an excited twirl and what looked like some kind of dance step. 

For several moments after Antonio had disappeared from sight, Lovino just stood and stared down at the number scrawled on the piece of paper, and those two words along with it. 

Slowly, he smiled.

He'd gotten asked out on a date. By someone who was cute and not entirely unpleasant, no less. Someone he'd managed to not even argue with for over an hour.

Feliciano was going to be so proud of him.


	8. GerPru: Coffee Shop AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** “There’s only one plug in this entire coffee shop and you’re sitting right in front of it and you’re not even using it, and my laptop is about to die in the middle of this online exam I’m taking, so whatever I don’t care how intimidatingly attractive you are I’m sitting down at your table to plug my shit in.” AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is from Gilbert's POV. 
> 
> I _tried_ to write this from Ludwig's point of view, but _it did not work oh gawd it was awful_ so I had to write it from Gilbert's. 
> 
> Gilbert's POV is a lot easier for me to write than Ludwig's. But I _will_ get Ludwig's POV eventually.

* * *

**Du Hast Mich**

* * *

He needed to bleach the roots of his hair again soon, Gilbert thought distractedly as he glanced in the mirror, running a pale hand back through the messy locks just enough to get the white strands out of his eyes. The dark brown at his scalp had grown out a little over a centimeter.

Later today, though; he couldn't worry about it now what with the online exam that was due in a few hours that he _really had to get on right away._

He'd been planning to get up early to study some more and then make sure he had enough time to take the exam without getting too stressed out, but he'd slept through his alarm and woken up two and half hours after he'd wanted to, and _fuck_ he no longer had any time to study he'd just have to wing the exam and hope for the best. Hopefully enough of what he'd stayed up late studying had stuck that he'd still pass. 

He was so rushed that he almost skipped putting the blood-red contact lenses in over his pale blue eyes, but decided that he could spare the few seconds to make sure he looked as awesome and unnerving as usual. He had a reputation to keep up, after all! 

In a hurry, he picked up random articles of clothing off the floor of his apartment, tugging them on as he made his way to the door. A black Rammstein t-shirt, maroon skinny jeans, a maroon plaid scarf, black fingerless gloves that had somehow miraculously stayed together. He wasn't as lucky with the socks, though, ending up with a mismatched pair: one black and the other blue with yellow chicks. 

He wanted to wear his awesome black combat boots, but they'd take too long to put on, so he slipped on his red sneakers instead, and he probably looked like a fashion nightmare but he _really_ couldn't care less, he _needed to pass this fucking exam_ and he couldn't do it in his apartment because his roommate Francis snored, his desk was covered in mess—because _Francis_ , goddamn him, believed that a messy desk was a sign of genius—and also he really, really needed coffee. As strong and black and bitter a coffee as coffee came, ideally. 

He grabbed his bag with his laptop on the way out, slinging it over his shoulder and hurrying out into the hall, using the stairs because they were faster than the elevator and he _needed to move move move!_

It wasn't until he bolted out of the building and the cold, misty air hit him that he realized he'd forgotten to grab a jacket. 

_Fuck it_ , he thought, doubling the scarf up around his neck as he ran through the somber, drizzly morning toward the closest coffee shop. Hopefully it didn't actually start raining on him for real, because he'd be drenched in seconds and he wasn't sure if his laptop bag was waterproof or not oh fuck what if it started raining and his laptop fried _fuck!_

He started all-out _sprinting_ for the coffee shop, and it was a good thing he did, too, because it started raining just as he turned around the block corner, and so Gilbert skidded to stop outside the cafe panting hard but only a little bit soaked. 

Oh _Gott_ , he hoped his laptop was okay! Hopefully his bag was at least water-resistant, because fuck, if his laptop was fried _then he was so screwed oh fuck his life would be over and goddamn him why had he procrastinated on studying for and taking this exam he'd been such an arrogant asshole so totally convinced of his awesomeness FUCK he was going to fail this._

He quickly got into the line that was way too long, move it people, move! because he _needed coffee and he needed it now oh Gott._

Though while he was standing in the agonizingly slow line that he was certain was trying to kill him, he did at least have time to check his bag see that the water hadn't seeped through and his laptop was perfectly safe. He gave a sigh of relief.

And then he froze. Because he remembered that he'd been studying last night, and Francis— _everything_ was Francis's fault, seriously—had been hogging the one power outlet in their tiny apartment not connected to their very necessary lamps and lights, so Gilbert's laptop had been running on batteries for a few hours, and he probably only had about an hour left of battery life at the _most_ , and that was if he was very lucky, and the online exam would probably take him longer than that, especially since he hadn't studied, so he needed to find a power outlet in the coffee shop, which could prove difficult because the cafe was fucking _packed_. 

At least it was nice and warm inside, though. And it smelled like coffee, which was always a good thing. 

He was practically vibrating with nerves as he glanced around the shop, but he was interrupted when the grandma standing in line behind him narrowed her eyes at him and said, “Young man! Are you purchasing a caffeinated beverage?” 

“Ja,” Gilbert told her distractedly, barely sparing her a glance as he craned his neck and tried to lean just enough out of line to see along the walls of the coffee shop without losing his place in line. 

“I don't think that's a very good idea, young man!” the grandma told him, wagging a finger in his face. “You already have plenty of nervous energy! Drinking coffee will only make your nerves worse!” 

“My body is nervous but my brain is still sleep-muddled,” Gilbert told her, straightening up in line and trying to give her a sheepish but charming and reassuring grin. 

She just narrowed her eyes at him further and started lecturing him, which he didn't really pay attention to, beyond wondering why his infamous Charming Smile of Awesomeness hadn't worked. 

Maybe it was the blood red contact lenses. 

Part of her lecture bled through, her reedy voice saying, “—and with your eyes so red, it's clear you need more sleep, young man! It's very important tha—”

Gott, this woman was like Elizabeta, except older, not as loud and screechy, and lacking in lethal frying pans to swing at his head. 

The old lady's prattling was still bound to give him a headache, though. 

“Look, I appreciate your concern,” Gilbert said, “but it's totally unnecessary, because I am awesome and am going to pass my exam with _flying colors_ , just as soon as I have some coffee in me to prevent me from getting a headache from caffeine withdrawal.” 

The grandma started lecturing him on how he shouldn't do drugs.

“I don't do drugs, okay!” Gilbert nearly yelled. “The exam is going to go awesome and there's nothing to worry about but I'm actually kind of stressed right now, if you haven't noticed! But everything will be a-okay I promise!” He gave her a thumbs-up and his most reassured grin. 

The grandma apparently saw through the act, and started telling him he should try meditation. 

“I don't have _time_ to meditate right now!” 

Honestly, normally he'd handle nosy grandmas with far more gallantry, but he was really stressed at the moment and not at all at his usual state of utter awesomeness. 

He needed to get this exam over with so he could go back to being utterly awesome again. 

He needed coffee. 

And to find a power outlet. 

_Finally_ he was at the counter, ordering and paying for his drink, and then he was able to slip away from the concerned grandma and move over to the other counter where the drink would be set, and he could stand there and scour the walls for that plug. 

He was starting to panic at the distinct lack of sockets until he spotted what must have been the _one and only power outlet in the entire goddamn coffe shop._

And it was right underneath a two-seater table, and only one of the chairs was filled, so maybe the person sitting there would let him—

Gilbert froze as his lyes landed on the man sitting in the chair. If it could even be called _sitting_ , because the man sat in the chair like a king sat on his thrown, and Gilbert was pretty sure that action had its own word that was much more regal than just _sitting_ , because there was no way kings could do something so mundane as _sit_ , and neither did this man, apparently. 

And it wasn't _perching_ on the chair nor was it _lounging_ in it, it was just kind of _occupying_ the chair with confidence and self-assurance and poise that made the man appear somehow above all the other people sitting at their tables around him. 

And the man looked liked he could be royalty, too, with his piercing, bright blue eyes, blond hair that was slicked back far too severely for anyone normal, strong, defined facial features, eyebrows drawn together in concentration, a condescending frown. He was wearing a long black raincoat, his shoulders obviously broad beneath it, and held with a lofty kind of rigidness even as he stared down his textbook. 

Okay, so maybe royalty wouldn't be reading a textbook—more like a scroll or something from a carrier pigeon that was fed only the best birdseed in the kingdom—but the man was looking at the textbook like it was a map and he was planning battle tactics or something. 

Gott this guy was _intense_ and serious-looking as hell. He probably had a stick so far up his ass that it was stabbing his brain or something, fuck. 

Fuck. Fuck fuck _fuck_. Why, oh _why_ did the man sitting in front of the power outlet have to be the most attractive man he had ever laid eyes on?! 

Gilbert suddenly felt very inadequate in his band t-shirt and maroon jeans and random scarf and mismatched socks and clashing sneakers. 

Fuck, there was no way he'd be able to sit there, not dressed like this, not stressing out over an exam like this, not with his the roots of his hair desperately needing to be bleached. 

This was the kind of guy he wanted to be able to turn all his charm on, and he was just about as lacking in charm as—as—well, as something really not-charming. Like a… what was appropriately lame? 

A wet noodle, or something. 

Well, maybe not that bad, but still pretty bad. He'd come up with a good metaphor later. 

His name was called, and he quickly grabbed his coffee and strode to one of the few open tables, which happened to be on the other side of the coffee shop, far away from the frighteningly attractive man and the only existing power outlet in the entire damn place. 

Gilbert had the strong urge to bang his head against the table. But he refrained, because he had awesome amounts of self-control and discipline. 

He took a large gulp of his coffee, and almost choked and spat it out it was so hot. But again, his self-control was fucking _iron_ , like the necklace he wore that he could use to carve his name or swear words into just about any surface ever. 

Yeah, that's how fucking awesome his self-control was. 

So with another large swallow of near-scalding coffee, Gilbert pulled his laptop out of the bag, slid it onto the table, flipped it open, and then waited the frustratingly slow _minute_ for it to boot up while he drank more of his coffee that was probably burning off all his tastebuds. His tongue would probably be all weird and numb and shit for a few days after this. 

Assuming he completed this exam in time and didn't _die_ , which was pretty safe to assume, because he was awesome and never lost. Ever.

Except when it came to fighting with his childhood BFF Elizabeta, but that didn't count, because she wasn't human. She was, like, a demon or something equally inhuman and terrifying. 

So Gilbert was totally going to win this exam. Absolutely. Because exams were definitely won. 

He logged into his computer, opened the web browser, went to the site to open the link to the online exam, cracked his fingers, took another large swig of hot, bitter black coffee that he practically couldn't taste anymore, and went to work winning. 

But apparently the world was _conspiring against him_ , like usual, because half an hour into what he was certain was a winning streak, his laptop started giving him desperate LOW BATTERY messages. 

_“Fuck!”_ Gilbert hissed, the sound luckily smothered in the hubbub of the cafe. He didn't want the grandma, if she was still around, to hear and start lecturing him on how he shouldn't curse, too. 

Unless she was one of those cool grandmas that cursed a lot. Maybe she was. She kinda seemed like it. In fact, hadn't he heard her curse at him a few times in her lectures? 

LOW BATTERY, his computer reminded him. 

_“Fuck!”_ Gilbert said again, because he was feeling extremely creative with his curses this fine morning. _“Fuck fuck fuck!”_ Truly, his awesome eloquence amazed even him, sometimes. 

LOW BATTERY, his computer reminded him. 

_“Fuck!”_ Gilbert had no choice. 

He needed that power outlet. 

Slugging down the rest of his coffee, and trying to trick his brain into believing it was beer and would give him the same kind of courage from relaxed inhibitions, Gilbert stood up, chucked the cup at the garbage can—it missed, of course, because that was just the kind of crappy morning that Gilbert was having, and he swore he heard the old lady yell, “You need to perfect your aim, young man!” at him—grabbed his laptop, and strode over to where the guy who looked like royalty was sitting. 

The man looked up at him, and Gilbert felt the air leave his lungs for a long moment, like he'd been punched in the gut. 

Because oh, Gott, those eyes were _pinned right on him and seemed to be burning holes through his face_ , and this guy was even more ridiculously attractive up close, holy shit. 

Drawing air into his lungs that felt like they'd collapsed in on themselves, Gilbert said, all in one breath: “There’s only one plug in this entire coffee shop and you’re sitting right in front of it and you’re not even using it, and my laptop is about to die in the middle of this online exam I’m taking, so whatever I don’t care how intimidatingly attractive you are I’m sitting down at your table to plug my shit in.”

And then Gilbert sat down across from the man and plugged his shit in. 

The man raised an eyebrow, which was somehow darker than his hair even though it looked like the man didn't dye or bleach or anything, and then went back to reading his textbook like he was planning the best way to completely obliterate it. Or obliterate someone. Or someones. 

But it definitely seemed to be a life-or-death matter, the reading of that textbook. 

Gilbert's computer was no longer complaining at him, in fact, now it was humming quite happily, the little light on the power cord glowing a reassuring orange, but Gilbert still couldn't focus on the test, his eyes slipping repeatedly back to the man sitting across from him. 

Was that a black trenchcoat the man was wearing? What did his body look like underneath it? And what did those lips, that looked so perfect frowning, look like when smiling? 

The man looked at him from beneath those oddly distinguished eyebrows. “Do you need something?” he asked smoothly, and Gilbert nearly melted, because that voice, fuck, that voice was so deep and sexy and just _fuck_ this was not good. This was not good at all. 

“Uh, yeah, actually,” Gilbert snapped, glaring, trying to convince himself the breathlessness he felt was from anger and not some other emotion. “I need for you to _stop distracting me._ ” 

The man raised one of those _fucking_ perfect eyebrows. “I haven't said a word, and I don't believe I've otherwise done anything to cause a disturbance.”

“You're _disturbingly attractive_ , is what,” Gilbert bit back at him. 

Oh. Crap. There went whatever slim chance he might have had with this guy _ever_. His inability to keep his thoughts inside his head was truly awesome, sometimes. And not awesome in the 'really fucking cool' sense or the 'inspiring admiration sense.' Awesome in the 'inspiring apprehension or fear' sense. 

But all the man said was, “And your eyes are disturbingly red,” quite calmly. Not at all fazed. “What else have either of us not been told before?” 

Gilbert laughed, because _holy shit_ , this guy was gold. “Ooh, sassy,” he said, cracking a sharp grin. The kind of grin that Francis told him to never, ever use when trying to flirt with anyone, because it was absolutely predatory and terrifying. “I like it.” 

The man did not seem the least bit terrified. “Aren't you supposed to be taking an online exam?” he said mildly. 

“I'm _supposed_ to be,” Gilbert agreed, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms, because this cool persona of arrogance and superiority? Yeah, he could do that. He was the fucking champion of that. “But you're making it rather difficult. And it's _your fault,_ so you need to fix it.” He tilted up his chin, staring the other man down defiantly. 

The man's eyebrow edged upwards again. 

Then the man stood up, walked over to a vacated table near them, grabbed the newspaper that had been left there by someone, and then walked back to his seat, setting the newspaper up in front of him to block his view of Gilbert, and subsequently Gilbert's view of him.

Gilbert fought the urge to cry because of how perfect this man was. If this man wasn't gay, then Gilbert didn't know _what_ he was going to do, because he was so head over heels at this point he was having trouble telling which way was up or down or sideways or right or wrong or _anything_. 

He'd didn't think he'd ever fallen so quickly or so hard before. 

“Thanks,” he managed, before taking a deep breath and diving into his winning-the-online-exam game with renewed fervor, the depressing headlines of the newspaper across from him silently cheering him on. 

When he finally, _finally_ came to the last question, answered it, and hit the Submit button, Gilbert threw his arms into the air and declared, “I win!” while grinning like a crazy person. 

When the newspaper tilted down to lie flat on the table, Gilbert immediately wanted to slap himself in the face for forgetting that there was the severely handsome man behind it. 

“I thought you were taking an online exam, not playing a video game,” the man said, one of those eyebrows arching up again, a frown pulling at his lips. 

Lips that Gilbert had to tear his eyes away from lest he lunge across the table and kiss them, twine his fingers in that severely slicked-back blond hair and _mess it up_ like the world was always messing up his life.

Gott, what was _wrong_ with him? He'd only barely just _met_ this man, and he didn't even know his name, much less anything about him. 

“I finished the exam and submitted it over thirty minutes before the deadline,” Gilbert said, smooth as fuck, because he was just so awesome that he could act totally suave even when he was freaking out over this insanely attractive person in front of him. “Therefore, I won.”

The man snorted. “I do not see what's so impressive about that. You must have had a few days to study for and complete this exam. You could have done it earlier.” 

“Now what would be the fun of that?” Gilbert asked, smiling sharply. “What's life without some risks, after all?” 

The man looked at him, face neutral. “Stable,” he suggested. “Safe.” 

“Boring,” Gilbert corrected, pointing a finger at the other man, smirking. “No pain, no gain, and all that.” He paused to gather his monumental amount of courage.

“So,” Gilbert said, smiling again, the man watching him curiously. “Speaking of taking risks, can I get your name?” 

The man's lips twitched at the corner, not a smile. Something more enigmatic. “Ludwig.” 

Gilbert looked at the man, and thought that, Yes, Ludwig was a perfect name for him. 

He waited a beat, but when no more was forthcoming, he prompted, “Just Ludwig? No surname?” 

“Just Ludwig, for now,” Ludwig said. He tilted his head slightly, and it was oddly… cute. “And you?” 

“Gilbert,” Gilbert grinned. “Gilbert Beilschmidt.” He held out his hand, which Ludwig shook, the touch sending a shiver down his spine.

Holy fuck, he just shivered because of a simple _handshake_. He was so screwed. 

And if he didn't ask this Ludwig to date him, right now, he was going to regret it for the rest of his awesomely miserable life. 

“Ludwig,” Gilbert blurted, before he could stop himself, “would you go on a date with the awesome me?” His eyes widened at his own brashness, hands clenching in his lap as he held his breath, watching the other man anxiously but trying to keep that anxiety off his face, having absolutely no idea if he was succeeding. 

He must have done something right, though, because Ludwig's lips did that enigmatic twitch thing again. 

“'The awesome me,'” Ludwig quoted him. 

“Yes,” Gilbert nodded, schooling his face into the utmost seriousness. “I'm awesome. You may feel inspired with admiration and fear.” 

“Is that why you wear the red contacts?” Ludwig asked.

“I wear the red contacts because it makes people nervous,” Gilbert said, smirking. “Smiling makes people nervous, too. You should try it more often.” 

Ludwig raised one of those _perfect_ fucking eyebrows, perfect as the rest of his face except for the way those kissable lips remained turned down. “Is that so?” 

“Don't worry, I'll teach you how to smile, if you don't know,” Gilbert said, grinning as brightly and charmingly as he knew how. Which he knew, after all those hours spent practicing in front of the mirror, was pretty damn bright and charming. “All you have to do is go on a date with me.” 

Ludwig said yes. 

Of course he said yes. Gilbert was awesome! And he totally won at flirting with intimidatingly attractive guys, so take _that_ world that was always trying to screw him over.


	9. TurGre: Unspecified Human AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** “Shut Up and Sleep With Me” by Sin With Sebastian.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After watching the Hetalia MMD video [“Shut Up and Sleep With Me, America!!”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmmC_4wIFtU) I HAD to write something with Greece and Turkey. They had the sexiest part in the entire video, hands down. (I could watch an entire video just of them walking like that, I'm not even kidding.)
> 
> I don't understand why Greece/Turkey doesn't seem to be a very popular pairing. They're so hot together! 
> 
> Anyways. There are allusions to sex in this chapter, but not actual sex. Absolutely nothing graphic at all. So I'm pretty sure this story can stay with the T rating. 
> 
> This is really just me trying out writing these two before I attempt writing anything longer with them.

* * *

**Shut Up and Sleep With Me**

* * *

_KNOCK KNOCK._

Somebody was banging on the door. 

_KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK._

Only one person ever banged on Heracles' door that loudly and persistently. And the yelling would start in three… two… one… 

“HEY, HERACLES! BUDDY, GET YOUR ASS UP OUT OF BED! WE'RE GOING TO EAT BREAKFAST AT THIS GREAT TURKISH PLACE! AND THEN WE'RE GOING SHOPPING FOR NEW STYLISH CLOTHES FOR YOU SO I CAN STOP LOOKING AT YOUR UGLY DRAB JACKET ALL THE TIME!”

“It's not uglyyy,” Heracles muttered, turning over and burying his face in his pillow, huffing out an exasperated breath. It was warm and he didn't want to move. Unless it was for sex. 

_KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK._

“HERACLES GET YOUR ASS OUT OF BED! WE'RE GOING WHETHER YOU WANT TO OR NOT!” 

It was really too bad that the guy he wanted to sleep with absolutely refused to admit that he was gay. Whenever Heracles tried to flirt with him, he always started stammering about this girl that Heracles didn't know. But there had been a few times where they had almost kissed, before he had pulled away and stammered some excuse. He was so obviously flushed and turned-on by Heracles' advances that Heracles really wondered who Sadik thought he was fooling. 

_KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK._

“HERACLES! IF YOU DON'T GET YOUR ASS OUT OF BED AND OPEN THIS DOOR IN THE NEXT FIVE SECONDS, I AM GOING TO KICK THE DAMN DOOR DOWN DO YOU HEAR ME?! ONE! TWO! THREE!”

Dammit, Heraclels liked having a door. 

“FOUR!”

Heracles was out of bed and had the door thrown open just as Sadik yelled, “FIVE!”

“Χαίρετε, Sadik,” Heracles yawned. “Did you have to come so early?” Seven in the morning was way to early for any of this. 

“WHY AREN'T YOU WEARING ANY CLOTHES?!” Sadik said, staring at him with alarmed olive eyes, glancing down Heracles' form and then quickly up and away, face flushed. “I told you to get dressed before coming to the door! Who the hell answers the door naked?!” 

“You didn't exactly give me any time to get dressed,” Heracles said unconcernedly, raising his arms above his head and arching his back as he stretched, making absolutely no move to cover himself up in any way. “I like having my door intact. And I really don't care if anyone sees me naked. I have nothing to hide.” 

“Heracles,” Sadik said, covering his eyes with a hand, voice slightly strangled. “It's not proper for guys to walk around naked even in the _bathhouses_.” 

“Cats walk around naked,” Heracles pointed out. “Nobody cares about that.” 

“That's DIFFERENT!” Sadik yelled, still covering his eyes with a hand. 

“I literally give zero fucks,” Heracles yawned again. He really wanted to either go back to sleep, or have sex with this handsome man in front of him. 

Tall, well-built, spiky dark brown hair with a few curls at the nape of his neck, slight stubble on his jaw, olive eyes that he liked to keep hidden. Long green jacket, brown pants, knee-high boots, tan scarf, red fez hat, all of which looked great on him, but which Heracles thought would look better coming _off_ him. 

“You _should_ give a fuck!” Sadik cried, and Heracles couldn't help but give a languid smirk, leaning against the door-jamb.

“I'd give a fuck to _you_ ,” Heracles said. “Or _take_ a fuck from you. Or neither; penetration isn't necessary to have a good time. Whatever you want. I don't want to do anything that you don't want to do. I want to do exactly what you want to do and are currently too afraid to ask for.” 

He watched as Sadik made a strangle noise and took a step back. And here was coming the usual excuse in three… two… one… 

“Heracles, man, there's this girl, and—”

“Shut up, and sleep with me,” Heracles said calmly, watching as Sadik made even more strangled noises. 

“Heracles, look—”

“Don't listen to those old conventions,” Heracles said seamlessly. “You're open-minded, at least that's what you keep on saying. You don't have to hide your real intentions.”

“Heracles—”

“It's your choice,” Heracles shrugged, still watching him. “I'm just saying. You're young. Free. It's obvious you want to sleep with me. I want to sleep with you. There's no reason why we can't do that.” 

Sadik still had his eyes covered, standing in the middle of the hall, breathing raggedly, and Heracles sighed, stepping out into the hallway and taking his arm. He didn't mind if someone walked in on them, but Sadik probably would.

“At least come inside,” Heracles said. “Unless you want to walk out of the building trying to hide a boner.” 

He gently tugged Sadik into his apartment, shutting the door behind him.

He left Sadik standing there with a hand over his eyes, walking back to his bedroom, calling over his shoulder, “I'm going to back to bed, now. If you want, you can join me. If you don't, you can leave after you've calmed down. Or you can raid my kitchen for tea. In any case, we can go out for breakfast and shopping in a couple hours, if you still want to.” 

“Heracles…” Sadik said, and trailed off. 

It really was strange how Sadik got like this. He was usually so loud, boisterous, enthusiastic, energetic, and adamant about what he did and did not want. But when it came to sex and liking guys… 

Heracles sighed, brushing a hand back through his hair that was tickling his collarbones. He wanted Sadik to feel as comfortable with his sexuality as he felt with all other aspects of himself. “Look, Sadik,” he said, not turning around. “If you want to sleep with me, I'll make it worth your while. If you don't, that's okay, too, I'm not forcing you. I just want you to stop lying to both me and yourself. I'm tired of this silent dancing game. You want us to dance around each other, bring music next time.” 

He heard Sadik chuckle slightly as he went to his bedroom, leaving the door ajar, and got under the covers, sighing against his pillow. 

And Sadik would be here in five… four… three… two… one… 

The door was pushed open. Footsteps padded over to the bed, a weight sitting down, a hand through his hair. 

"Can... can I just kiss you, then?"

Heracles rolled over onto his back, smiling. "Of course."

Sadik leaned down and kissed him softly, gently, and Heracles ran fingers through Sadik's hair but made no move to deepen the kiss.

This was enough, for now.

When Sadik pulled away, gasping slightly, face lightly flushed, Heracles smiled lazily and curled up around him. "Mm. That was nice."

Sadik smiled, running a hand through his hair. "Yeah."

"'M sleep now," Heracles murmured, tugging lightly at Sadik's arm. "Sleep with me."

Sadik raised an eyebrow, though is lips were twitching. "I thought you said you wouldn't force me into anything."

"Not sex-sleep," Heracles muttered at him, glaring slightly, before closing his eyes and pulling the blanket up over his head. "Just sleep-sleep." His voice was muffled. "For another hour."

Sadik snorted, patting him on the head as if he were a cat. "Well, then. I'll just go make breakfast for when you wake up again, eh?"

There was something that sounded like muffled, slurred Greek from under the blankets.

"What was that?" Sadik grinned, poking the blanketed lump. "I couldn't hear you."

"Will you wake me up with a kiss?" Heracles repeated, poking his head out of the blankets to look at Sadik hopefully.

Sadik stared at him for a moment, before a smirk slowly curled his lips. "If you promise to eat my cooking without complaining."

Heracles murmured something like "Hate you love you sleep now" and disappeared beneath the blankets again.

As Sadik turned and left the room, he found that he couldn't stop grinning.

* * *

“—And THEN this guy tried to pickpocket me!” Sadik cried, throwing up his hands. “So I chased the bastard down and grabbed my wallet back, and oh man, you should've _seen_ the expression on this guy's face when I caught him—”

Heracles, looking divine in nothing but a pair of sweatpants, green eyes bleary and brown hair mussed, slunk over like a cat and crawled into Sadik's lap, nuzzling his head under the other man's chin. “Shut up and sleep with me.” 

Sadik laughed as he rubbed the back of his boyfriend of five months. “But I didn't even get to the point of my story yet! You see—”

Heracles muttered something incoherent and raised his head to capture Sadik's lips in a lazy kiss. 

“Hey, no distractions!” Sadik laughed again, pushing his boyfriend off him onto the floor as he got up from the couch.

“...Gonna punch you,” Heracles said from the floor. 

“Later,” Sadik said amiably as he grabbed a disc case from the table and sauntered over to the CD player. “You see, what I was trying to tell you was that I found the Greatest Hits of Tarkan album!” 

“No, you were telling me about how your wallet got stolen and you beat the guy up for his insolence,” Heracles muttered. “Like any vengeful god would.” 

“Look, I wouldn't have any problem with your inclination to compare me to a god,” Sadik said with a grin as he popped open the CD case and then slipped the disc into the player, “except that the Greek gods are disturbing, and the stories always end in death and bloodshed.” 

“Doesn't sound too incorrect to me.” 

“I am not disturbing!” Sadik cried, whirling around to point at him accusingly. “And you're the one who always starts the wrestling fights!” 

“They always end in sex… I like sex. And I like wrestling. I'm quite good at both.” 

“You don't need to tell _me_ that,” Sadik chuckled, turning back around and pressing the Play button, a large grin on his face. “Now witness that greatness that is the greatest hits of Tarkan!” 

The song started, and Sadik grinned as he held out a hand to his boyfriend. “Benimle dans eder misin?”

And then both of them were dancing in the living room, hips swaying, Sadik laughing and singing along while Heracles muttered, “I hate you and your Turkish music, Sadik.” 

“It's not my fault that Turkish music is just so good you can't help but dance along!” 

In the brief pause just as the ninth song ended, Heracles made a mad dash for the CD player, hitting the Pause button before the next song could start and he'd get sucked into more dancing. 

“Hey!” Sadik protested, reaching around him to try to turn the CD back on, only for Heracles to wrestle him to the ground, kissing him. 

“You know,” Heracles said, sitting up on Sadik's chest and looking down at him petulantly, “I was _going_ to have sex with you, but now I'm tired from dancing, so I'm just going to sleep on you.” 

And with that he lay down on top of Sadik and closed his eyes. 

“Ooph!” Sadik chuckled, poking him in the ribs. “Not fair! You're more muscular than I am! When do you have time to hit the gym so much, anyway?” 

Heracles muttered something indistinct against his neck. 

“I'm taking you out shopping after this,” Sadik told him, but Heracles just mumbled something else incomprehensible and fell asleep. 

Sadik sighed, but smiled slightly as he rubbed Heracles' back, tilting his head to press a kiss to his boyfriend's hair. “Seni seviyorum.” 

He was content to lie there, arms behind his head, humming a soft tune as he watched the ceiling, feeling Heracles' heart beating against his, the warmth and weight of his boyfriend comforting against him.

They must have been lying there for at least half an hour, and would have lain there longer had Heracles' cat not tried to curl up on top of Sadik's face. 

“YOU GODDAMN CAT!” Sadik yelled, bolting upright and shoving both cat and boyfriend onto the floor, hands over his face. 

“Τι?” a sleepy Heracles mumbled, green eyes blinking slowly. 

“YOUR STUPID CAT TRIED TO SLEEP ON MY FACE! I THINK HE SCRATCHED ME! I'm going to have ugly scars on my face now! I'm going to have to hide them with a mask!” 

“Let me see,” Heracles said, crawling over and carefully peeling Sadik's hands away from his face, green eyes appraising as he looked at the damage. 

“Just a few light scratches,” Heracles said, leaning forward to press light kisses to the stinging red lines. “Not bleeding. Shouldn't scar. I think you'll be okay.” 

“Thank goodness for that,” Sadik murmured, returning the kiss when Heracles pressed his lips to his. 

The cat pounced on his foot. 

“I HATE YOUR GODDAMN CAT!” Sadik shouted as he pushed his boyfriend away from him and scrambled to his feet. “WHO THE HELL DOES HE THINK HE'S MESSING WITH?! MY FACE IS NOT A SLEEPING MAT! THAT'S IT, HERACLES!” he gestured furiously. “IT'S ME OR THE CAT! ONE OF US HAS TO GO!”

Heracles sighed. “We've had this conversation at least twenty times already, Sadik. I'm selfish and keeping you both; it's not up for debate.” Standing up and stretching, arching his back so that it cracked loudly, he yawned, “Let's go shopping.” 

Sadik, who had been shaking his fist at the cat and threatening to throw it into the river when his boyfriend was fast asleep, turned to Heracles and cackled, “We'll get you in style, yet!” 

Heracles sighed, but smiled slightly when Sadik grabbed his hand and pulled him into the bedroom to get dressed in something more than just sweatpants.

And if they ended up taking off more clothes than they put on, and having to take a shower before they left? Well. That was nobody's business but theirs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Translations:**  
>  _Χαίρετε_ – Hello (Greek)  
>  _Benimle dans eder misin?_ – Would you like to dance with me? (Turkish)  
>  _Seni seviyorum_ – I love you (Turkish)
> 
> Let me know how I did writing these two! I've only watched the Hetalia anime, haven't read the manga, and there are only, like, three episodes with Turkey that I've seen, so there wasn't much to go off of. I really love them though and want to do their characters as much credit as I can.


	10. GerPru: Neighbors AU (version 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** Person A has just moved to a new house and Person B is the asshole who keeps mowing their lawn at 8 in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ludwig's POV was REALLY challenging for me... This is literally my THIRD rewrite of this prompt, and I don't DO rewrites. Except where Ludwig is concerned, apparently x.x
> 
> The first version I wrote I deleted after 2,000 words because it was so terrible. The second version I wrote got over 8,000 words long, and I finished it, but it still felt slightly off, so then I tried again, and this chapter is the result. But I still really like the second rewrite, so I'm actually posting BOTH versions.
> 
> So there are two different stories for this prompt: this chapter and the next. From a writer's standpoint, I think the stylistic and characterization differences between the two are rather fascinating. And my sister, who betas this story for me, actually really liked both versions, which I was pleasantly surprised to hear. Maybe you'll also like both, or maybe you'll have one that you like better than the other.
> 
> (Also, during the summer I apparently lost my ability to write short pieces, so both chapters are rather long...)
> 
> * * *
> 
> NOTE: Dialogue that is italic and in German quotation marks, _„Like this,"_ means it's an English translation of what they're saying in German. If one of the words is nonitalic, that means the word was said in English (basically only the word 'awesome' for Gilbert, lol). I only included a little bit of actual German that I figured everyone would know or be able to figure out (and that I was sure I couldn't get wrong, lol).

* * *

**Puddles of Lamplight**

* * *

Ludwig had just moved to his new house—that he was renting, because he was only twenty-five and wasn’t sure he was ready to commit to buying a house (and he’d just recently bought a new motorcycle)—and had gotten everything settled and ordered exactly how he wanted it, so he’d been feeling pretty accomplished. 

But the first morning after waking up in his new house, his morning routine was interrupted by a the loud, rumbling roar of a lawnmower. 

Ludwig frowned at his reflection, finishing combing back his hair and securing it with gel, before glancing at his watch.

It was eight in the morning, and it was a Saturday. 

Ludwig had made sure to look at all the rules for the residential area, and he knew that, on weekends, loud noises were not allowed before nine o’clock in the morning. 

The lawnmower kept roaring loudly outside. It was probably interrupting the sleep of citizens who had been looking forward to sleeping in on the weekends after a long week of working. 

So Ludwig slipped on his black leather jacket over his white t-shirt and laced up his black combat boots, pulling the legs of his jeans down over the ankles (he was planning on taking his new BMW S1000RR for a spin after setting this person straight), and walked outside, letting his feet stomp slightly as he walked over to his neighbor’s house. 

Not that the man pushing the lawnmower could hear his stomping over the roaring of the machine. 

“HEY,” Ludwig yelled at him. “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” 

The man looked over at him in surprised, eyes wide (the irises of his eyes were red, and for a moment Ludwig was surprised), and turned off his lawnmower, looking at him curiously as Ludwig stomped over. 

“I’m mowing the lawn,” the man said, eying him. “What does it look like I’m doing?” He raised a white eyebrow (he looked maybe twenty-something, but his hair was white). “And also, you do realize that the greaser look went out in the 50’s, right? That look is so not awesome on you.” 

Ludwig glanced at his watch, before looking back up, glaring at the man who still had a hand resting on the offensive lawnmower. 

“It’s 8:27 on a Saturday morning,” Ludwig ground out. 

The man’s white eyebrow raised higher, and he cocked a hip as he leaned into the lawnmower, looking Ludwig over, before meeting his eyes again. “You don’t look like I just woke you up. You look like you’ve been up for a few hours.” Those red eyes widened in recognition. “Oy, aren’t you the one I saw going for a run at like six this morning?” 

Ludwig’s expression must have confirmed it, because the man laughed. “It was you! You look totally different with your hair greased back like that!” 

“I used hairgel, not grease,” Ludwig felt the need to point out, glaring. “And that’s not the point—the _point_ is that it’s _Saturday_ which is a _weekend_ , and on the weekend, it is _illegal_ to use loud machinery before _nine o’clock_.” 

To punctuate this point, Ludwig showed the man his watch, which read clearly that it was 8:29. 

The man laughed again, and Ludwig clenched his jaw in annoyance. 

“So you came out here just to tell me that I need to wait thirty-one minutes before mowing my lawn, so no one will call the cops on me?” the man asked, smirking at him, red eyes glittering. 

“Yes,” Ludwig growled, and the man burst out laughing again, harsh kesese’s that were quickly grating on Ludwig’s nerves. 

“Please wait thirty more minutes before turning on your lawnmower again,” Ludwig ground out, not a request, and turned and stormed off, the man’s laughter rending the air behind him. 

He really needed that motorcycle ride.

* * *

The next day at 7:02 in the evening (barely still light out) found Ludwig answering his door to find his red-eyed neighbor standing there with a smirk on his face and a sixpack of German beer dangling from the fingers of his left hand. 

“My moving-in, welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift,” the man said, lifting up the bottles with a grin. “My only condition is that I get to share them with you.” 

Ludwig stared at him. “I was reading,” he said flatly, thinking of his book closed without a bookmark on the chair, the page number he’d left off on hovering precariously in his short-term memory. 

“And now you’re going to drink beer with me!” the man grinned, extending his right hand. “I’m Gilbert Beilschmidt, by the way.” 

Ludwig clenched his jaw in annoyance, but shook the offered hand nonetheless. “Ludwig Schulz.” 

“Ha!” Gilbert declared, grinning. His grip was firm, and when they let go, he punched Ludwig lightly in the shoulder. “I was right! You _are_ German!” 

“What gave it away,” Ludwig said dryly, but stepped aside to let the other man in, seeing no other option. “Leave your shoes at the door,” he instructed, and led the way inside to his living room, only half-listening to Gilbert’s comments on his living space. 

“You call this a _home?_ ” Gilbert demanded, shaking his head, white bangs falling into his face. “For shame! I don’t see a single piece of evidence that you actually live here!”

“I only moved in two days ago,” Ludwig reminded him stiffly, sitting down on the black leather couch, surreptitiously glancing around the room. White walls, a few framed landscape photographs, large windows that let in plenty of light, white carpet, black couch, black-legged glass coffee table, flatscreen TV between black cabinets that held alphabetized DVDs, a black bookcase on the other wall with books—everything from engineering to fantasy, categorized by subject first and then by author. 

Ludwig didn’t see anything wrong with any of it, except maybe the view outside. The house had been given new landscaping by the owner, but Ludwig dreaded having to tend to it. He didn’t particularly like lawnmowers or hedgeclippers. 

“When I finally decide to buy a house, I’m going to have a Japanese rock garden,” Ludwig muttered under his breath, not realizing he’d actually said it aloud until Gilbert laughed. 

“You really hate lawnmowers or something?” Gilbert said, smirking as he opened one of the beers with a bottle opener on his keychain, handing the open bottle to Ludwig, who took a sip.

Well, at least Gilbert had good taste in beer, Ludwig thought, taking another sip. 

Gilbert smirked at him, and already his red eyes weren’t so perturbing.

“I thought you’d like it,” Gilbert smirked, leaning back into the couch and crossing one leg over the other knee, and Ludwig found himself staring at the man’s socks. 

His visitor was wearing a dark red jacket, gray shirt, and dark skinny jeans, but his socks were bright blue with yellow chicks. 

Gilbert seemed oblivious to his confused stare, though, taking a drink from his beer and then lowering his hand, moving the bottle in circles, the beer inside swishing with the movement. For a while they drank in silence. 

The alcohol had just reached enough effect to get Ludwig to relax slightly when Gilbert started quizzing him on his life. 

“So, Ludwig. What brings you to the suburbs?” 

“I recently got a job in the city. It’s a bit of a commute, but the houses here are still better deals than the city apartments.” 

“Kesese! I know, right? I’m the same! Where do you work?” 

“I’m an engineer for the government.” 

“Hm, sounds like a lot of paperwork. I’m a bartender.”

“A bartender.” 

“For like a year. It’s better than being a waiter or a barista, I can tell you that much. Don’t ever major in history, Lutz—just don’t do it. You can’t do anything with it.”

“My name isn’t Lutz.” 

“Of course it isn’t. How old are you, Lutz?” 

“Twenty-five.”

“Awesome! I’m twenty-seven, so that makes me your senior, kesese! If you ever have any questions about life, you can just ask me!” 

“Alright, then. How do you afford to rent your house if you’re just a bartender?” 

“I share it with roommates, duh! Antonio and Francis—I’ll introduce you guys sometime!” 

“Mm.” 

“Sooo, Ludwig. Are you gay?” 

Ludwig started, looking at him with a frown. “I don’t think that’s the kind of question you just ask someone out of the blue,” he muttered, looking down at his nearly-empty beer. 

“I’m gay and I don’t mind the question, but maybe that’s just me,” Gilbert shrugged, swishing the dregs of his beer in a few more circles before swigging it down, lowering his arm and letting the bottle dangle in his grip. “I was just wondering because you’re hot, and I was wondering if I could flirt with you or not.” 

Ludwig could feel his face burning up, quickly drinking the last of his beer (as if that would hide anything). He could practically _feel_ Gilbert smirking at him. 

“I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you tell someone you’ve barely met,” he muttered, keeping his gaze on the floor. 

It was a very, very bad idea to have a white rug. All the dirt showed. He’d have to vacuum it every other day, at the very least. 

“You _are_ gay, aren’t you?” Gilbert said, leaning closer, his voice smug, and Ludwig’s cheeks burned even hotter. 

He stayed silent, tongue caught in his mouth, and glared at the empty beer bottle in his hand. 

“Kesese!” Gilbert laughed, shifting away to lean back into the couch cushions. “So I _can_ flirt! Oh, this is going to be so much fun! You blush so easily!” 

Ludwig set his empty beer bottle down, suddenly angry, and stood up, glaring down at the other man. 

“I am not here for your entertainment,” he bit out, meeting the surprised red gaze unflinchingly, his fists clenched. “If all you want is to mess with the new guy on the block, then you can kindly remove yourself form my house.” 

Gilbert’s gaze softened. “Sorry, sorry,” he said, raising his hands placatingly, his expression so mild that Ludwig found his anger replaced by surprised. “I just like pushing for reactions from people. According to Francis it’s one of my least attractive traits.” 

He smiled, gesturing at the four other beer bottles on the table. “Shall we have another? I won’t flirt with you, I promise.” 

Ludwig sat back down on the couch, watching him uncertainly. 

Gilbert’s smile turned wry, and he plucked at the fabric of his sock. “Actually, I really came over because Francis is out with his girlfriend and Antonio is out with his boyfriend, and I just felt like hanging out with somebody.” He shrugged, looking away, still plucking at the sock. “It kinda sucks to always be the third wheel, you know?” 

Ludwig sighed, his anger completely dissipated. “You could have just said that at the beginning,” he muttered, and Gilbert looked at him sheepishly. 

There was a trace of insecurity there, and Ludwig felt a twinge of understanding. He was always the odd one out when hanging out with anyone. Though he never found himself feeling quite as lonely as this man looked. 

And he didn’t exactly have anything else to do that day. 

“I’m not the best conversationalist,” Ludwig said, looking away. He gestured to the cabinets next to the TV. “Maybe you’d be interested in watching a movie? I don’t have Netflix set up yet, but I might have a DVD you’d be interested in.” 

When he glanced at the man to gage his reaction, he was surprised at the wattage of Gilbert’s grin: the entire room lit up with it. 

“You, Ludwig, are _awesome!_ ” Gilbert declared, bounding to his feet and around the coffee table to the cabinets, opening the first one and crouching down as he browsed Ludwig’s DVD collection. 

Ludwig could only watch him, mystified, and a minute later Gilbert gave a cry of triumph and pulled out _Lola rennt_ with a delighted, “I love this movie! Just for owning it you get like twenty awesomeness points!” 

Gilbert put in the movie and opened two more beers, handing one to Ludwig and then settling back into the couch with his own, leaning into the corner with his legs pulled up on the couch cushion next to him, keeping his beer in hand and sipping as he watched. 

Ludwig, for his part, found himself watching Gilbert almost as much as the movie. He’d seen the movie so many times he practically had it memorized, but the other man’s facial expressions were new—the way he laughed, and talked at the screen in German. 

His voice was made for German, Ludwig thought. English was too smooth, too soft for that voice, too irregular, lisps and slurs and drawled-out consonants; that voice was made for German’s harsh, guttural sounds, the drumbeat rhythm.

Gilbert caught his eye once, during one of the running scenes _(“I wish I was a forest, of trees that do not hide; I wish I was a clearing, no secrets left inside”)_ , giving him an unadulterated grin, and Ludwig blinked and looked away, keeping his attention on the screen from that point on, though his ears were still attuned to Gilbert’s hissing laughter and droll commentary. 

Apparently, though, at some point his attention had been diverted to the film enough that he hadn’t noticed when Gilbert had stretched out on the couch and his feet had ended up in Ludwig’s lap. 

The end credits were rolling when he finally noticed, and he found himself absentmindedly tracing the outlines of the yellow chicks on the blue background, Gilbert humming and wiggling his toes, snuggling further into the couch, his eyes closed as he listened to the end-credits music, a small, content smile on his face. 

Ludwig watched him, tracing the designs and wondering how Gilbert could be so comfortable on a stranger’s couch, his feet in a stranger’s lap. 

When the credits came to an end, Ludwig prodded Gilbert’s feet to get him to move them so he could get up and turn the TV off. 

When Gilbert didn’t move, Ludwig realized that the man had fall asleep sometime during the credits. 

Ludwig sighed, picking up Gilbert’s legs and moving them from his lap. 

After the both the television and DVD player were turned off and the disc had been returned to its case, the case shelved alphabetically, Ludwig walked over to the couch and looked down at the sleeping man, frowning. 

The windows showed that it was dark outside. He glanced at his watch: 9:34 at night. Not late enough that he’d feel bad for waking the man up. 

„Gilbert,“ Ludwig said, crouching next to the couch and shaking the man’s shoulder. _„Wake up,“_

_„Hm?“_ Gilbert hummed, bleary red eyes opening slowly to blink at him. 

_„You fell asleep,“_ Ludwig said in German. _„I don’t think you want to spend the night on my couch.“_

Gilbert’s lips curled, and he closed his eyes again, snuggling down. _„I don’t know,“_ he murmured, pressing his face against the black leather (his hair stood out starkly). _„It’s a nice couch.“_

Ludwig sighed, brushing a hand over his slicked-back hair, noticing that the gel was starting to come undone, strands falling loose. _„You can’t possibly be that eager to sleep on a stranger’s couch. You don’t even know me—I could actually be a serial killer and planning to murder you in your sleep.“_

_„My cute little Lutz, murder me?“_ Gilbert murmured, cracking an eye open (a startling red sliver of crescent moon) to look at him, giving a small grin. _„What slander.“_

Ludwig just stared at him, before he sighed again, standing, picking up the last two unopened beer bottles to put in his fridge. _„Stay if you want. I’m going to get ready for bed—I always wake up at 5:00 AM no matter what time I fall asleep, and I like to try to get at least seven hours.“_

Gilbert muttered an indistinct answer and curled further into the black leather cushions, and Ludwig gave a sigh of resignation and left the room.

* * *

Ludwig wasn’t surprised when he woke up the next morning and wandered into his living room to find Gilbert still there, asleep on the couch. 

Ludwig watched him for a few moments, before leaving the room and finding a pad of post-it notes. He printed down a message and then left the post-it stuck to the glass coffee table in front of where Gilbert was lying, before leaving to hit the gym. 

He returned at 6:30, clothes drenched with sweat and muscles trembling from exhertion, and Gilbert was still asleep on the couch. 

Ludwig watched him for a few more moments, brow furrowed, before he took the note and crumpled it in a fist, tossing it in the recycling on his way to the shower. 

When he came back out at 7:04, hair wet and slicked-back, clothes clean and dry, Gilbert was still asleep on the couch. 

Ludwig frowned at him for a few moments, before heading to the kitchen to make breakfast. 

When he finished cooking (sausage, hasbrowns, apricot fruit muesli) at 7:31, Gilbert was still asleep on the couch. 

Ludwig scrutinized his sleeping form for a few moments, before returning to the kitchen, eating his own breakfast and packing the rest in two glass containers with sealed lids. 

_„Gilbert, wake up,“_ he ordered, and when the man made no signs of waking, Ludwig tipped the couch so that he fell off, before setting the couch back. 

Gilbert groaned, rolling over on the floor to blink up at him. _“What the hell was that for, Lutz?“_

_„I’m leaving for work,“_ Ludwig said. (He thought about protesting the nickname, but decided it wasn’t worth it.) _„You need to go home.“_

Gilbert groaned and rose to his feet, stumbling, not quite awake as Ludwig escorted him to the door (he was already running late). 

_„Here,“_ Ludwig said, handing Gilbert his shoes and the containers of breakfast, nudging him outside. _„Eat it before it the sausage and hashbrowns get cold and the museli gets soggy. Remember to return the containers.“_

And then he closed the door in the confused and half-asleep Gilbert’s face and headed to his garage to get ready to motorcycle to the city. He didn’t own a car because he only had the money for one vehicle, and a motorcycle was more efficient (and Ludwig would drink blood if it were a more efficient way to get energy) since motorcycles got better mileage and could park in the city for free. Though admittedly the BMW S1000RR was a sportsbike, so it wasn’t very comfortable to use in congested areas (but the thrill of the bike on the backroads more than made up for a little discomfort on his morning and evening commutes). 

He put on his leathers, opened the garage door, rolled his bike out, closed the garage door, mounted the bike, started it up, and powered out of his driveway, all the while trying not to feel guilty for how he’d kicked Gilbert out of the house.

* * *

6:43 that evening saw Ludwig answering the door to find Gilbert standing there with a grin on his face and the empty glass containers under an arm. 

_„I took the liberty of cleaning them,“_ Gilbert said, handing the containers to him, grin twisting into more of a smirk. 

Ludwig took a moment to examine the containers (they were cleaned well), before nodding at Gilbert. „Danke.“ 

_„No problem,“_ Gilbert shrugged, hands in his jacket pockets. 

He‘d changed clothes and was wearing a black jacket, white shirt, and maroon jeans—Ludwig was noticing a color scheme. (He wondered what color Gilbert‘s socks were). 

_„It was the least I could do to thank you for breakfast and letting me spend the night on your couch,“_ the man said.

_„It was no problem,“_ Ludwig said as he looked away, slightly uncomfortable (he‘d enjoyed Gilbert‘s company more than he‘d admit). 

Switching to English, Gilbert said, “Francis insists I repay you by inviting you over for dinner sometime.” 

Ludwig looked at him, surprised, and Gilbert gave a sharp grin (but there was something uncertain in his eyes). “Francis would be cooking of course,” he said, laughing lightly. “He’s currently a waiter, but he wants to become a chef so he’s constantly practicing. Won’t hardly let me and Antonio near the kitchen.” Red eyes glittered with mirth. “We aren’t complaining. His food is, as Antonio says, _muy bueno._ ”

Ludwig was surprised at the practiced ease with which the Spanish fell from Gilbert’s tongue, though he realized a moment later that he probably shouldn’t have been. (He himself knew some Japanese and was fairly fluent in Italian, after all.) 

Gilbert seemed to have noticed his moment of surprise, though, because he smirked. “Antonio is from Spain, and Francis is from France,” he explained, rolling his eyes as he added, under his breath, “He likes to rub that in everyone’s face.” Meeting Ludwig’s eyes again, he said, “We’ve known each other for years now, and have pretty good grasps of each other’s languages.” He snorted. “Francis says my French accent sucks, but I don’t know what he’s talking about.” Under his breath: “His German accent is worse.” 

Gilbert was almost pouting, at that point (but his eyes were smirking), and Ludwig couldn’t help the low chuckle that vibrated his chest. 

“I’ve already eaten dinner today, but I could come over tomorrow,” Ludwig found himself offering, and Gilbert’s grin evaporated any doubts he could have had. 

“Awesome!” Gilbert declared, and then stepped into Ludwig’s house and toed off his shoes (his socks were bold orange and purple stripes that clashed terribly with his maroon jeans), taking the glass containers from Ludwig’s startled hands and walking down the hallway, calling, “I’ll put these in the kitchen!” 

Ludwig stared after him for a few moments, frozen, and then he shut the door (a bit harder than he needed to) and strode after him, yelling, _„GILBERT. I thought we agreed that I‘d be coming over for dinner at your house tomorrow, not that you were staying over at my house tonight!“_

Gilbert placed the clean containers on the counter and then turned to give him a confident grin (uncertain red eyes). _„I thought we could hang out tonight, too! What else is there for you to do?“_

Ludwig closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose. _„I was reading.“_

The pause before Gilbert answered was just slightly too long to have been anything but a hesitation. _„Kesese! A book couldn‘t possibly compare to the company of the_ awesome _me!“_

Ludwig looked at him. Gilbert was fiddling with one of the pull-strings of his jacket hood (long, worrying pale fingers). 

_„It’s not that I mind the company,“_ Ludwig said carefully, struggling for the right words to express himself as he watched the hestitant man in front of him (that smirk was so confident). _„It‘s just that I don‘t understand why you‘re seeking out my company. I‘ve only been here for three days, and you‘re already acting more comfortable around me than most people I‘ve know for years. So you‘ll have to excuse me if I‘m wary.“_

Gilbert relaxed slightly at those words, smirk looking more amused as he eyed Ludwig‘s form, raising an eyebrow as he met his gaze. _„Really? You look like you were a jock in high school.“_

_„Not all jocks are popular, you know,“_ Ludwig said, his back stiff. _„I was the straight-A jock that made everybody nervous.“_ (Well, everybody except for Feliciano, who had the kind of simple common sense that told him it would be a fantastic idea to be friends with the guy that even the bullies were scared of.)

Gilbert laughed. _„And then in college you were the guy that everyone went to for questions about the homework, and that everybody invited to their parties but were never surprised or too disappointed when you didn‘t show up,“_ he guessed. 

_„Pretty much,“_ Ludwig agreed, putting the glass containers in their proper cabinet (he noticed Gilbert watching, and had no doubt that Gilbert had memorized the location so he could put them away properly next time). 

_„Shall we go to the living room?“_ Ludwig offered, and Gilbert nodded, letting Ludwig lead the way. 

_„So,“_ Gilbert said, that smirk still in place (but eyes soft, curious) as they sat down on the black leather couch. _„Have you ever had a boyfriend, then?“_

_„It‘s not completely obvious that I haven‘t?“_ Ludwig answered, and Gilbert laughed. _„But I hardly think it‘s fair that I‘m answering all your questions when you haven‘t answered mine.“_

Gilbert looked at him curiously, and Ludwig returned the look flatly. _„You never told me why you‘re seeking out my company. Your housemates can‘t possibly be absent all the time.“_ He frowned. _„Are you fighting with them?“_

Red eyes blinked at him, and then Gilbert laughed again, shaking his head (white hair brushing over his face, bangs too long). _„No, we‘re not fighting. You just get kind of annoyed with people when you live with them, you know?“_

_„No, not really,“_ Ludwig said (the only person he‘d lived with in the past several years was Kiku, his college roommate, and Ludwig had never met anyone who was such comfortable company). _„I can understand that you might want a change of scenery, though.“_ (There had been more than one reason that Ludwig had taken the new job and moved to a new living space.) _„But that still doesn‘t explain why you‘re here, when you could be anywhere.“_

_„Why not?“_ Gilbert was looking away, wrapping the dark pull-string of his jacket around his pale fingers, and Ludwig realized he was avoiding. 

Ludwig sighed, before getting up and leaving the room (red eyes burning holes in his back), returning with the two leftover beers from the day before, handing one of the open bottles to Gilbert and sitting on the floor with his back against the couch. He didn‘t drink the beer, just held the cold bottle in his hand, condensation dripping down and collecting at the top edge of his thumb and forefinger. 

It was quiet, but it wasn‘t terribly uncomfortable (it was slightly awkward, but when it came to ignoring something, Ludwig could outlast most everyone else), and he watched Gilbert‘s reflection in the flat-black surface of the flatscreen TV. 

Gilbert was watching the side of his face, head tilted slightly, taking a sip of his beer every minute or so. Evening light filtered through the windows, gently bathing Gilbert‘s white hair in the same bluing shade, the dimmness softening the harsh lines of his face. 

_„You‘re not afraid of me,“_ Gilbert said, and Ludwig blinked in surprise, turning to meet red eyes. 

_„Why would I be afraid of you?“_ he asked, honestly confused. 

Gilbert shrugged, gesturing to his eyes, his hair. _„I tend to make people uncomfortable.“_

Ludwig chuckled, then (ignoring the weight that hunched Gilbert‘s shoulders), and took a drink of his beer. _„I think I need a membership pin to that club,“_ he said, and watched Gilbert‘s tense face relax in out of the corner of his eyes, shoulders relaxing back, the grin returning to thin lips. 

_„Well, if you didn‘t slick your hair back and glare at everybody, then maybe you wouldn‘t need one,“_ Gilbert teased. 

Ludwig sent him a glare. _„I‘ll have you know that this is my face‘s default expression, thank you very much,“_ he said, and Gilbert laughed. 

Ludwig hid the twitch of his lips by taking another sip of beer, savoring the bitter, robust taste. 

He gestured to the TV cabinet. _„Did you want to watch another movie?“_ When Gilbert‘s eyes lit up and he leapt from the couch, Ludwig teased, _„Are you sure the real reason you‘re here isn‘t to watch one of my movies on my TV since one of your housemates is hogging the one at your place and watching some crappy romantic comedy?“_

_„You figured me out,“_ Gilbert deadpanned, crouching in front of the cabinet, scanning the DVDs. _„What‘s this?“_ he asked, pulling one out and showing him the title written in Japanese, raising a white eybrow. 

_„A Japanese horror film,“_ Ludwig answered. _„A present from my college roommate. It‘s not for the fainthearted.“_

Gilbert grinned (eyes smirking) and put the DVD in. 

_„Don‘t think I‘ll let you into my bed just because you wake up trembling in fear after a nightmare,“_ Ludwig said, and Gilbert gave a distracted, _„Who, me? I‘m too awesome for nightmares!“_ and kept his focus on the screen (his lips were twitching).

* * *

It didn‘t take long for Ludwig to start figuring that Gilbert had put in a horror film so he could use terror as an excuse to cling to him and press closer with each subsequently frightening development, muscles tense and twitching, German expletives slipping from his tongue. 

Ludwigh sighed, but resignedly wrapped an arm around the other man‘s shoulders and let him cling as much as he wished (it wasn‘t like he wasn‘t used to that kind of thing; after all, he had a clingy Feliciano for a best friend).

* * *

After the film was over, Gilbert looked at him with wide eyes (entreating). 

„Nein,“ Ludwig told him, and forcefully disengaged himself from the clinging arms (Gilbert was surprisingly strong, and Ludwig guessed that he hit the gym pretty regularly), standing up. _„You can stay on my couch, or I can walk you to your house and you can see if you can get one of your housemates to take pity on you.“_

Gilbert debated this for a few moments, huddled on the couch with his legs hugged to his chest, biting his lip (looking through too-long white bangs to scan Ludwig‘s face), red eyes conflicted (calculating). 

It was already 9:17, and Ludwig just looked at him, unimpressed (and tired from a long day at work). 

Gilbert finally sighed, relaxing and unfurling his limbs, standing up and running a hand through his hair, brushing his bangs out of his face (eyes completely self-possessed, just like Ludwig had suspected they‘d be). _„I‘ll walk myself home. You obviously weren‘t falling for it, anyway.“_

At the front door he paused, flashing Ludwig a grin (and it wasn‘t even a smirk). _„Thank you for the wonderful evening.“_

,i>„The pleasure was mine,“ Ludwig said (and it wasn‘t even a lie). 

(The image of Gilbert walking relaxed and night-drenched down the sidewalk (skirting puddles of lamplight like a ghost) lingered behind in Ludwig‘s mind even after he‘d shut the door.)

* * *

It was 6:00:00 exactly the next evening when Ludwig knocked on his neighbors‘ door. 

It was 6:00:03 when Gilbert opened the door with a grin, like he‘d been waiting (there was relief in his eyes). 

“Well well,” he said, lips twisting in a smirk, in complete denial of any nervousness he might have been feeling, suggesting that it was Ludwig who was the desperate one here, as if he wasn’t the one who was wearing a white button-up shirt that was wrinkled and not buttoned up all the way. “Look who’s perfectly punctual.” 

_“Says the person who opened the door three seconds after I knocked,”_ Ludwig thought but didn’t say. What he did say was: “I prefer to be at least fifteen minutes early to such events, but I’ve before been informed that it’s better to be fashionably late. I compromise by arriving on time.” 

“Well come on in, Mr. My Idea Of Being Fashionably Late Is Being On Time,” Gilbert said with a roll of his eyes and a quirk of his lips. “Half the party is already here.” 

When Ludwig stepped inside and followed Gilbert down the hall into the living room, he was struck by the difference between the house and his own. 

German furniture around the room, Spanish carpets on the floor, French paintings hanging on the walls, guitar and flute cases propped up in the corner, cook books left out on the colorful mosaic coffee table, potted plants sitting by the windows and hanging from the ceiling, cha cha music playing in the background and the sound of raised voices in the kitchen. 

Ludwig suddenly realized why Gilbert was complaining about his house being lifeless, and was again struck by confusion about why Gilbert kept visiting his house when it had to be more pleasant here. 

“Ludwig’s here!” Gilbert called, strolling into the kitchen, Ludwig following hesitantly behind. 

Two men who’d just been yelling at each other, one’s hands clenched in the other’s shirt collar, turned to look at them in surprise. 

“Oh, bother,” sighed the shorter man, removing the hands from his collar and taking a step back, straightening his white button-up shirt and green vest, brushing a hand through short, slightly messy blond hair. There was flour dusting one of his thick eyebrows and he eyed Ludwig with condescending green eyes. “Who’s this jock? He looks like a real wanker.”

“Arthur, _mon ami_ , you are tactless and lack taste!” the other man cried, turning to Ludwig with delighted blue eyes, sashaying over and sweeping his chef’s hat from his head and dipping into an extravagant bow in one fluid motion, wavy, shoulder-length blond hair falling into his face. “I am _Francis Bonnefoy.”_ He straightened with just as extravagantly and looked up at Ludwig, his smile dazzling, unnervingly flirtatious. “I have heard so much about you, Ludwig, _mon cher._ It is an absolute delight to finally make your fine acquaintance!”

“I can’t say the same,” Ludwig said stiffly, and those blue eyes sparkled. 

“Oh Gilbert, he is _très beau!_ ” Francis cried, delighted, chef’s hat held forgotten in his hand as he gestured grandly. “You really must bring him over more often!” he said, before looking at Gilbert and adding something in French with a wink. 

Gilbert, looking annoyed, practically sprang at him and pulled him into a headlock, hissing at him in French and kicking the white chef’s hat across the floor while the blond man whined and said something else that Ludwig couldn’t understand but which seemed to make Gilbert more irritated. 

“Serves the cheese-eating surrender monkey right,” Arthur sniffed disdainfully, turning and heading towards the stove. “I’m going to make some tea.” 

Gilbert and Francis cried „NEIN!“ and « NON ! » at the same time and, disengaging from each other, leapt at Arthur and pulled him back, yelling at them in their own languages (Ludwig didn’t know what Francis was saying, but Gilbert was saying something along the lines about Arthur not being allowed in the kitchen ever again) and pushing him from the kitchen as Arthur said, “I can’t understand a single thing that you’re saying, you nutters! Let go of me!” 

“Out of my kitchen!” Francis cried, pushing him out of the room. “Out! And Gilbert, keep him out there!” 

Ludwig just stood there watching as Gilbert pulled Arthur into a headlock and dragged him into the living room and threw him onto the couch, Arthur complaining the entire way, half the words unfamiliar to Ludwig, sounding even more foreign in the man’s British accent. 

Next to him, Francis heaved a sigh, brushing wavy blond locks from his face. “ _Mon Dieu,_ that man is a walking catastrophe.” The French accent lay thick on every syllable. 

“Something’s burning,” Ludwig said, nodding to the stove, and Francis turned in alarm and rushed over, cursing in French. 

Ludwig walked back into the living room, where Arthur had sat up on the couch and was arguing with Gilbert, who was standing over him with his arms crossed, about whether or not his scones were edible. The argument didn’t appear to be getting anywhere. 

“Are you trying to kill us?!” Gilbert was demanding. 

“Of course not!” Arthur said primly, brushing invisible dust from his black trousers and looking up at the other man from beneath thick eyebrows, glaring. “If anybody is plotting to kill us, it’s you, you demonic red-eyed wanker.” 

Gilbert’s shoulders stiffened, a sharp grin spreading across his features even as his eyes hardened, but just at that moment there was a rhythmic knocking at the door. 

Gilbert paused. “Looks like Antonio forgot his keys again,” he remarked (lightly but with an edge), and stalked out of the room, but not before point at Arthur and barking, “Ludwig! You watch him and make sure he doesn’t go anywhere! If he does, you have everybody’s full permission to punch him!” 

Arthur crossed his arms and sank back into the couch, muttering what sounded like more insults under his breath. 

Then he plucked at a button on the cuff of his sleeve that was just shy of falling off, sighed and wished he had his sewing kit with him. 

Ludwig stood there stiffly and stubbornly ignored the feelings of awkwardness and being overwhelmed. 

“I suppose you’re just another wazzock, then,” Arthur said, not looking at him. 

Ludwig didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded like an insult that meant something along the lines of ‘idiot’ or ‘brute.’ 

“I’m an engineer working for the government,” he said. “I just moved into the house next door a few days ago.” 

Arthur sent him a sideways look. “You shouldn’t involve yourselves with these people,” he said disdainfully. 

“And yet you’re still here, even after knowing us for six years,” Gilbert pointed out, smile back in place as he entered the room again, two other men behind him conversing in Italian, one man apologizing profusely while the other grumbled something incoherent, heads of brown and auburn hair leaning close together. 

_“Accidenti!”_ the second man suddenly exclaimed loudly, making Ludwig glance at him (he’d been watching Gilbert for any lingering traces of hurt from Arthur’s comments, only to see Gilbert sit down on the couch next to Arthur and the two of them seemed perfectly comfortable with the proximity, nothing hostile in their body language), only to find himself staring in surprise into the wide hazel eyes of Lovino Vargas. 

_“Potato bastard!”_ Lovino yelled at him, striding over and punching him repeatedly in the abs (too light to hurt; he wasn’t trying), tears welling at the corner of his eyes. “What the hell are you doing here you big idiota?!” 

Everyone was watching the two of them in shock. 

“Feliciano called me the other day crying because he missed you you jerk!” Lovino yelled, still punching him. 

“Really?” Ludwig said calmly, catching the smaller man’s hands and holding them there, just tightly enough to stop the light barrage of fists. “Because I recall Feliciano calling me the other day crying because he missed you.” 

“Let go of me, bastard!” Lovino cried, trying to yank his hands away, but Ludwig held them there, knowing that if he let go the Italian would just start hitting him again. “You are your stupid potatoes that you eat can go to hell!” 

„Ja, ja,“ Ludwig said patiently, finally letting go when Lovino stopped trying to fight him, instead leaning forward and burying his face in Ludwig’s shirt, sobbing. His fists clenched in the cotton fabric. 

“Idiota,” he was muttering between sobs (that odd hair curl shaking with his shoulders). “Idiota idiota idiota.” 

Ludwig rubbed the man’s back. “It’s good to see you again, Lovino.” 

The man who’d come in with Lovino, assumedly Gilbert’s housemate Antonio, hovered a few feet away with a hand occasionally reaching towards the Italian, looking lost. Arthur was watching the scene with curiosity, while Gilbert looked on the verge of shock and laughter. 

“So you two know each other?” Gilbert managed (corner of his lip twitching, barely restrained). 

“He’s my idiot brother’s best friend,” Lovino muttered into Ludwig’s now tear-soaked shirt. At least he’d chosen a black shirt, so the water stain wouldn’t show too much (he wasn’t sure he’d recovered from that instance with the silk tie—the Vargas brothers were why he couldn’t have nice things). 

“We went to the same high school,” Ludwig explained, still rubbing Lovino’s back, feeling comfortable in the familiar territory of comforting one of the Vargas brothers (some things never changed). “His younger brother Feliciano and I were in the same grade.” 

“Stupid potato bastard,” Lovino grumbled, pulling away and wiping at his eyes with a hickory-brown sleeve. 

“Dinner’s ready!” Francis declared, sweeping into the room with a flourish, white apron still tied around his waist over his violet shirt and red jeans (purposefully ostentatious?), only to stop and stare at them in surprise. He tilted his head (blond waves against stubbled cheek, stubbled chin). “Did I miss something?” 

“Mind your own business, you stupid pervert!” Lovino snapped, and Francis smiled beauteously. 

“Ah, Lovino, _mon cher!_ As charming as ever, I see!” 

“Fuck you!” Lovino snapped, and stalked over to Antonio, tugging on the Spaniard’s scarlet shirt. “Let’s leave, Antonio. This place is full of Dummkopfs.” 

„Dummköpfe,“ Ludwig corrected, and Gilbert burst out laughing while Lovino turned to glare at him, snapping, “Like I care, moron!” 

“Now now, Lovino,” Antonio said, voice practically sing-song (comforting as a lullaby but not as sad), a hand placed gently on the Italian’s shoulder. “Let’s at least stay for dinner, no? Francis is a great cook!”

“He probably drugged the food,” Lovino muttered. 

“Lovino~,” Antonio said (chiding, nearly whining). “Francis wouldn’t do that!” 

“We’d kill him if he did,” Gilbert snorted, perched on the arm of the couch, legs stretched out in front of him (blood-red socks that stood out starkly next to his his gray jeans, white shirt—like his eyes) and leaning back slightly. 

Lovino shot Ludwig a glance (from behind long auburn bangs he kept in his face so he could hide, so unlike his younger brother who kept them brushed to the side so he could see and be seen). “I suppose if the perverted turophile tried anything, the potato bastard would smite him...” 

“’Smite!’” Gilbert repeated, and laughed, falling backwards across the couch (movements exaggerated, needlessly dramatic). 

Lovino shot him a caustic glare. “You should’ve seen what the bastard did to people back in high school…!” 

“Oh, I wish I had,” Gilbert said, sitting up, grin wide (something wicked in his eyes). 

Ludwig raised an eyebrow at him. „Schadenfreude?“ he inquired lightly, and Gilbert fell back laughing again (cackling _kesese_ ’s, and Ludwig was still intrigued by the sound). 

“Nobody will need to be smitten, Lovino,” Antonio assured, and Gilbert’s laughter doubled in intensity.

“Too late…!” he gasped out weakly, making a weak shaky in the Spaniard’s direction. “You’re already…!” He clutched his stomach again as he doubled over, tears of mirth trickling from the corners of his eyes. 

“Stop laughing, potato asshole!” Lovino snapped at him, and Gilbert laughed so hard he fell off the couch, landing on the floor with a thump (a graceless sprawl of limbs, white and gray on the rich colors of the Spanish carpet). 

“You’re all bonkers,” Arthur said, and facepalmed (with the insufferable, superior grace of a duke, and Ludwig didn’t blame Lovino for the scathing glare he shot the Brit’s way, or the muttered Italian insult).

“You are all so mean!” Francis whined, fingers clenched in his apron now, shaking his head back and forth. “My _délicieux_ food will become cold and be completely wasted! You should know that in the Western world, France is virtually synonymous with gastronomy!” 

“Gas astronomy?” Arthur inquired, raising a thick eyebrow, and Francis virtually pounced at him, hitting him repeatedly with his chef’s hat, crying, _“Gastronomy!_ The art of choosing, cooking, and eating good food! I here I thought you were _cultured!”_

“Stop _hitting_ me, you nutter!” Arthur said, lifting an arm in front of his face to fend off the soft fabric hat that was whipping his blond hair into even more cowlicks (the man’s hair didn’t seem stay down, no matter how many times he’d rubbed his hand back over it). 

Francis had grabbed Arthur by the collar and was shaking him again, yelling at him in distressed French while the Brit just fixed him with an airy glare, much like the scene Gilbert and Ludwig had walked in on in the kitchen earlier, and Gilbert was still laughing on the floor, while Lovino tried to leave and Antonio tried to keep him there, speaking in beseeching Italian (likely Lovino had refused to learn Spanish, aside from some insults and curses, much like he’d done with German). 

Ludwig thought about taking a tip from Lovino’s book and just turning around and leaving, but food sounded amazing, right then (delicious aromas wafting from the kitchen, his mouth watering), and he was loath to back out of a commitment (he’d said he’d stay for dinner, so stay for dinner he would, even if he was the one who’d have to ensure that they actually ate). 

Everyone was raising their voices in anger, raising their voices higher to be heard over the raised voices, but Ludwig was the loudest when he yelled, _„SHUT UP!“_ in German (he‘d found that yelling tended to be more effective in German, whether people understood what he was saying or not, but the sudden quiet and the eyes all fixed on him told him that everyone in the room had understood what he‘d said). 

“We came here to eat dinner,” he ground out, in English, glaring at each of them (Lovino, Antonio, and Francis looked relieved, Arthur apathetic, Gilbert oddly gleeful). “So by all means, let us eat.” 

« Merci, » Francis said, smiling and looking nearly on the verge of tears as he ran to the kitchen to get the dishes, leaving Arthur to irritably straighten out his collar and smooth the fabric of his vest. 

Ludwig glared at the rest of the people in the room until they moved. 

Lovino marched over to the dining table (rectangular, sturdy red oak wood, white table cloth, a blue bowl of fruit set in the center) and sat down with a huff (on one of the four chairs that actually matched the table, the other three mismatched, different woods and different styles), grabbing a tomato from the fruit bowl and biting into it, glaring down at the table surface. Antonio sat down next to him, relaxing in his chair and smiling like all was suddenly right in the world. 

Arthur sighed and sat down at the table (taking the seat set awkwardly on a corner) as if he were very put-upon to do so, sending Ludwig a brief glare before turning his attention to the place settings scrutinizingly (simple white plates, paper-lace placemats, a knife, a spoon and two forks at each place setting, blue napkins). “Two forks is blatant overkill,” he muttered, sniffing, turning his nose up in the air as he looked away. “Who the hell does he think he’s trying to impress?” 

“Oh, I dunno,” Gilbert drawled, rolling his eyes as he picked himself up off the floor and strolled over, taking the chair at the foot of the table (tilting it back so the front legs were off the floor, precarious). He raised his white eyebrows at the Brit, smug lips curling. “Maybe he’s just trying to rub his awesome cooking skills in the face of a certain someone who’s in denial of the fact that he can’t cook at all.” 

“I surely do not know what you’re talking about,” Arthur said, insouciant and dismissive. “There is nothing wrong with my cooking.” 

Gilbert cackled, and Antonio gave an embarrassed chuckle, hand nervously at the back of his neck. “Ah, _mi amigo...”_ he said, trailing off (his smile was rueful, but so large it scrunched his eyes).

_„Denial!“_ Gilbert crowed in German, triumphant.

(If this was what it was always like at Gilbert’s place, Ludwig thought he understood why Gilbert kept coming over to much calmer, much quieter house.)

Ludwig was rubbing the bridge of his nose as he took the open seat next to Gilbert (across from Antonio, who was on Gilbert’s left), a sigh heavy in his chest, but then Gilbert punched him lightly in the arm and the breath was let out instead in a grunt of surprise, and he turned his head to see Gilbert smiling at him. 

_„Thanks for coming, Ludwig,“_ he said, and any complaint Ludwig might have had died a swift and preemptive death. 

And then Francis brought the food out, and Ludwig was gladdened further that he hadn‘t left, because whatever could be said about Francis‘s personality, he was a good cook.

Appetizers of vegetable soup and _salade Lyonniase_ , a _pièce de résistance_ of _cassoulet au canard_ , a side of _bistro pommes frites_ , and Ludwig was content to eat in silence while the others talked, telling himself the food was the only thing keeping him there (that it had nothing to do with the man next to him smiling, red eyes bright, leaning into his personal space in a way that was oddly gratifying).

“You’ve truly outdone yourself, Francis!” Antonio declared, all enthusiasm. “How are you not a professional chef yet?” 

“Ah, you flatter me, _mon ami!_ ” Francis said, pleased (preening like peacock). “As for why I’m not yet a chef, I can only assume that my elegant charm and beautiful face make me so talented as a waiter that they are loath to hide me away in the kitchens.” 

Arthur snorted derisively. “Anyone’s who’s charmed by you is clearly daft as a bush.” 

“Ah, _mon cher,_ don’t insult yourself like that!” Francis cried, making Arthur sputter indignantly while Gilbert and Antonio burst into laughter.

“I thought you said Francis has a girlfriend,” Ludwig mumbled, leaning slightly closer to Gilbert so only he would hear.

“Oh, he does,” Gilbert murmured back, grin wide. “But this Arthur—the two of them have been dancing around each other for years now, much to the amusement of the rest of us. It’s awesome entertainment.” 

Collecting himself, Arthur sniffed, nose in the air as he said, “You’re a real git, if you think that I’m the least bit charmed by you.” 

“There is no shame in admitting it!” Francis declared, fingertips on his chest (fingers splayed, wrist bent dramatically, tossing blond waves of hair). “I am _irrésistible, non?_ ” he shot this question at Lovino, sending him a wink.

Lovino’s face flushed with anger, and Ludwig felt his stomach sink, his muscles tense. 

And then Lovino was on his feet, yelling insults in Italian that had Antonio blanching, and there was a tomato in his hand, and his arm was reeling back, the tomato sailing towards the Frenchman—

And then the tomato was in Ludwig’s hand, plucked from the air, and he was standing and they were all staring at him with wide eyes. 

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING,” Ludwig yelled at Lovino, who cowered, shrinking closer to Antonio. Ludwig’s hand came down flat against the table (cotton cloth beneath his fingers), making the dishes rattle and everyone jump. “This is a WHITE tablecloth! Do you even KNOW how hard tomato stains are to get out of white fabric?!” 

Lovino relaxed, recognizing this side of him. “Pedantic bastard,” he muttered under his breath, and Antonio looked surprised while Gilbert was laughing, doubled over and barely staying in his chair. 

Francis leered at him and said something in French that sounded lewd. And then he let out a cry of pain and clutched his shoulder, the orange that Ludwig had grabbed from the fruit basket and socked him with rolling across the floor. 

“If you feel the need to throw something, choose an object that won’t stain,” Ludwig grunted to Lovino, and then took his seat just as Gilbert fell out of his, rolling on the floor in hysterics (he was going to get bruised if he kept falling off furniture like that, Ludwig thought exasperatedly). 

Francis was still whining and rubbing his shoulder. “ _Aïe_ , did you have to hit me with so much force, _homme?_ ” 

“If you didn’t make lewd comments and purposefully agitate my friends then I wouldn’t have to,” Ludwig stated stiffly, and Francis blinked (a subdued and almost contrite expression taking over his features). 

“Serves you right, you fucking pervert,” Lovino muttered, sadistically gleeful (and his gaze, when he glanced at Ludwig through dark auburn bangs, were filled with respect, but also with smugness—Lovino always had been good at getting Ludwig to fight his battles for him). 

Francis seemed to crumple slightly. « Ah, je suis désolé, » he said, ducking his head (blond hair in his face, downcast eyes, shoulders slightly hunched). 

Arthur, Antonio, and Gilbert (now sitting up on the floor) were staring at Francis, mouths open. 

“Well, blimey,” Arthur said, impressed. “He actually got the frog to apologize.” A glance at Ludwig, a nod, a smug smile. “I like this bloke,” he said, and settled back in his chair. 

_“Ja_ , that was pretty awesome,” Gilbert acknowledged (and when he looked at Ludwig the expression was almost proud). 

Antonio just smiled again, eyes scrunching again, hand scratching the back of his neck again. “It’s about time someone told you off, mi amigo,” he said to Francis (but his smile never stopped brightening the room, and Ludwig caught Lovino watching the Spaniard with something uncharacteristically soft in his hazel eyes). 

Francis heaved a sigh, looked up through his hair with a smile (it was shaky). “ _Oui_ , I suppose I did let myself get a bit carried away, did I not?” 

“Damn straight,” Arthur said immediately, and Francis’s shoulders slumped further.

Antonio, apparently oblivious to the awkwardly somber mood that had fallen over them (a gray, foggy veil, but it was so much better than Lovino’s hurt or anger), scrutinized the tablecloth and asked, “Say, isn’t this the tablecloth Gilbert cut eye holes in to turn into a ghost costume for Halloween three years ago?” 

Gilbert’s eyes widened, and he leapt to his feet, saying, _“Don’t!”_ but Antonio had already lifted up the fruit bowl from the center of the table, revealing two eye-shaped holes in the fabric, the woodgrain of the table showing through (knots in the woodgrain like irises, pupils). 

_“Sí_ , it is!” Antonio said, and laughed (Ludwig felt something tightening in his chest). “I was wondering where we’d gotten a white tablecloth from!” 

Gilbert looked decidedly guilty.

“Is nothing sacred here?” Ludwig said, and groaned, hand over his face (holes in a tablecloth shouldn’t leave him feeling so despondent). 

_“You’re_ sacred,” Gilbert blurted, apparently without meaning to, heat rising to his cheeks when Ludwig glanced at him in surprise (red blush bringing out red eyes). 

Everyone else was watching, too, stunned silent, and Ludwig felt heat rising to his own cheeks, where he knew it would clash terribly with his hair.

„Es tut mir leid,“ Gilbert said, head ducked (hair in his face, white against flushed cheeks), long, pale fingers plucking at the hem of his shirt. 

_What are you apologizing for?_ Ludwig wondered, but the words never left his mouth (throat constricted shut, heart trying to beat its way out of its somatic confines). 

_„Forget I said that,“_ Gilbert muttered, and looked up, smiles twisted and eyes fragmented, and Ludwig felt the shards impale his chest. 

_„What if I‘d prefer not to forget?“_ Ludwig murmured, and he was almost disconnected from his body, watching himself stand, take two steps to cross the distance between them, place a hand on Gilbert‘s warm cheek.

Wide red eyes met his gaze, jarring him back into his body, and when he pressed his lips to Gilbert‘s (swift, soft, chaste, a butterfly-touch, brush of iridiscent wings), he felt every nerve alight, collectively sending tingles down his spine. 

He pulled away to see Gilbert‘s softly stunned face, lips slightly parted, tongue darting out to run over them (trying to figure out if the kiss had been real), and Ludwig felt like maybe something had possessed him as he said, “It’s getting late, and I have work tomorrow morning. I expect, however, that I’ll see you when I get back? Maybe for a real date this time?”

Gilbert stared at him, blinking (white eyelashes, like they were frosted with snow), lips still parted. _„Did you just ask me to be your boyfriend?“_ he managed, when his vocal chords started working again, and the way German sounded in Gilbert’s voice ran chilly fingertips down Ludwig’s spine. 

_„It’s not completely obvious that I did?“_ Ludwig asked, and then Gilbert was laughing (delighted), and Ludwig felt the tension rush from his shoulders like a wave receding back into the ocean. 

“It’s a date, then,” Gilbert grinned (Francis was sighing happily, Antonio beaming, Arthur sniffing in disdain, Lovino pretending to vomit—the four of them went ignored). 

Ludwig nodded, turned to leave. “I’ll contact you so we can set up a time and location. And remember—on-time is fashionably late.” 

He walked back to his house in the dark (avoiding the light pooled beneath the streetlamps, lest the puddles turned out deeper than they seemed), feeling like maybe he was insane.

(The rapturous kesese’s of Gilbert’s laughter echoed in Ludwig’s mind long after he’d closed the door, chasing smiles like butterflies to his lips.)

* * *

_(A year later)_

* * *

Ludwig’s watch read 7:02 when there was a knock on his door, and he opened to reveal Gilbert standing there with a grin on his face and a six-pack of beer dangling from his fingertips.

_„You‘re late,“_ Ludwig intoned.

_„Am not!“_ Gilbert countered. _„This is exactly the time that I knocked on your door that first time, remember?“_

Ludwig smiled slightly, looked away, cheeks warm. 

_„You DO remember, then,“_ Gilbert smirked, and stepped inside, toeing off his shoes (his socks were white with rainbow chicks, an odd contrast to his maroon jeans, black shirt, red jacket) and handing the sixpack to Ludwig. _„Happy first-year anniversary of living in this house! I was going to bring a present, but, well,“_ a shrug, smile sharpened and red eyes softened, _„figured I‘d just save it for our anniversary as boyfriends in a few days.“_

Ludwig hummed and leaned in to kiss him briefly, and Gilbert grinned as he sauntered deeper into Ludwig‘s house (into his heart, into his life). 

Swells of sunlight trapped inside his ribcage, Ludwig followed, closing the door behind him. 

It shut with a soft _click_ that was drowned out by the sound of Gilbert‘s laughter. 

(Only when Gilbert was there did Ludwig‘s house truly feel like home.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is a different take on this prompt. You'll probably be able to spot some aspects from the next chapter that I composted into this one, but they're entirely different stories.


	11. GerPru: Neighbors AU (version 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** Person A has just moved to a new house and Person B is the asshole who keeps mowing their lawn at 8 in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my SECOND rewrite of the prompt, but I'm posting it after the third rewrite, because I like them better in this order.

* * *

**Light Through Clean Windows**

* * *

Ludwig deeply enjoyed Sundays. 

They were the one day of the week that he actually let himself sleep in and then relax for the rest of the day. Sundays were his weekly refuges, and he treated his time for relaxation with the same studious seriousness with which he treated his work. 

Every morning, Monday through Saturday, he woke up at 05:00 sharp, brushed his teeth, made his bed, and got dressed for his workout sessions. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday he would get his aerobic exercising by going on a run, and Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday he would get his anaerobic exercise by hitting the gym.

He would be back home at 06:30 to shower, grab breakfast, and get ready for his day at work. 

Mondays through Fridays at saw him in his black BMW Z4 at 7:00 sharp, and he would arrive at his work in the city (he’d started working there almost immediately after graduating college with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Physics, and was still working there almost three years later) anywhere between 07:35 and 07:50, depending on the traffic, ready to start working before 08:00. 

He was always the first one to arrive, so it was his job to open the place and turn off the security alarm. Most of his coworkers didn’t arrive till 09:00 or 09:30, and Heracles didn’t arrive till 10:30 most days, but Ludwig relished the time to himself in the early morning. 

Lunch was from 12:00 to 13:00, though Ludwig was back at work as soon as he could escape the socializing, usually around 12:30. He would then work till 17:30, at which point Heracles kicked him out because everyone else had left half an hour previous and he wanted the workplace to himself for the next couple hours.

At Heracles’ insistence (“You’re already working overtime, Ludwig,” Heracles said. “Go home”), Ludwig would leave by 17:40 (“If you really hate going home that much,” Heracles said, “adopt a cat so you have something worth coming home to. Cats are cute and fluffy and irresistible”) and be home somewhere between 18:30 and 18:45 (“I don’t like cats, Heracles”), as the return commute tended to take longer than the morning one (“...There is something wrong with you, Ludwig”). 

He strove to eat dinner at 19:15, usually making himself something quick and easy or just grabbing some leftovers from a previous night. 

By 20:30 he was usually done eating and washing the dishes and had started working again on some problem he hadn’t been able to figure out yet or some new project he wanted to get a head start on. If he couldn’t make any progress, he would vent his frustrations with more exercising, either at the gym or going on another run. 

He made himself stop whatever he was doing and get ready for bed at 22:30, getting into bed by 23:00, at which point he would try to fall asleep. Usually he gave up after fifteen minutes of his mind driving him crazy with everything he needed to do. So he would either grab a book and read until he was tired enough to fall sleep without thinking too hard about anything, usually around 01:00. Or else he would get up and get more work done, and would get caught up in that and not fall asleep until around 2:00. 

Which left him with three to four hours of sleep most nights, but he’d found that he could go about a week getting that little sleep before it started it have noticeable side effects. 

Saturdays he would wake up at his usual time and do his usual morning routine, and then go shopping for the week, before trying to either get more work done or get some baking done before Feliciano invited himself over (sometimes with Kiku in tow, sometimes not). Feliciano usually arrived around 11:00. 

Feliciano would then proceed to make pasta in Ludwig’s kitchen while chattering happily or drag him out of the house to have lunch at the Italian restaurant his family ran. Then afterwards he would possibly drag him to a museum, or a park, or to see Kiku and drag him out somewhere as well, since Feliciano complained that he got out even less than Ludwig did. 

Ludwig usually spent the time with his friends making sure that Feliciano didn’t get hit by a car or fall over a railing or get hit by a random object someone had decided throw (all things that had nearly happened to the Italian so often that Ludwig marvelled at how Feliciano managed to survive the rest of the week without him), and making sure that Kiku didn’t get left behind when he stopped to take photos of the things that caught his interest. 

(The three of them were so different that Ludwig wondered at why they’d been assigned as roommates in college. Ludwig figured that the whoever was making the roommate assignments simply thought they wouldn’t get along with anyone, and placed them all together because they didn’t fit anywhere else. But Ludwig figured that was why they’d somehow, miraculously, become friends.)

He was usually out of their company by 18:00 (except for when they had movie nights, and stayed till about 22:00), at which point Ludwig was too tired to do much other than eat dinner, read, and fall asleep. After the long week of sleep-deprivation and stress, and several hours of interacting with Feliciano, Ludwig would usually be so tired he’d be asleep by 22:30, and his mind wouldn’t bother him. 

And then it was Sunday. 

Gott, Ludwig deeply enjoyed Sundays. 

He would wake up at 05:00 out of habit, but he’d stay in bed, and within ten minutes he was asleep again. Sunday mornings he usually didn’t get up till around 10:00, having enjoyed about twelve hours of sleep to partly make up for the lack of sleep from nights previous. 

After brushing his teeth, making the bed, showering, and eating breakfast (he skipped his exercise routine on Sundays, figuring that he did enough the rest of the week that he could take the day off), he would begin his day of relaxation. 

He still had a schedule and things he wanted to get done, of course, but it was looser on Sundays, and the items on his to-do list were things like reading, cooking, cleaning the house, and gardening, four necessary activities he found to be very calming and grounding. He would usually cook in morning, wash his car in the middle of the day, clean his house in the afternoon, garden in the early evening, and then read books related to computer programming at night, because he was always looking to improve his work. 

After his peaceful day, he’d usually manage to fall asleep by 22:00 again, managing seven hours of sleep before waking up on Monday morning to go to work, ready to implement his new ideas. 

Yes, Ludwig deeply enjoyed his Sundays. 

Which was why, when he was woken up at 08:00 on Sunday morning by a very loud and continuous noise, he was decidedly pissed.

* * *

It felt like seconds after looking at the clock, seeing the red numbers 05:00, and then laying his head back down again that the noise started. 

Cursing, Ludwig stuck his head under his pillow and pulled it down over his ears, waiting for the noise to stop.

It didn’t. 

His body felt heavy, his head was on the verge of aching, and Ludwig just wanted to sleep. What the hell was anyone doing making that much noise at five in the morning, he thought furiously as he threw his pillow across the room and sat up, only to see that his clock read 08:04. 

Ludwig calmed down slightly. Eight in the morning was certainly better than five in the morning. 

But he was still pissed. It was a Sunday, the one morning when he got to sleep in, and some asshole was—!

Stomping to his window, he ripped aside the curtains and threw open the glass pane hard enough to rattle the windowframe, glowering outside.

Somebody was mowing the lawn of the house next door. 

Which confused Ludwig for a moment, because he knew that the 12-year-old son of the family that lived there (Ludwig was terrible at rmembering names—he was much better with numbers) mowed the lawn at noon on Saturdays with a push-mower for allowance money. 

And then Ludwig remembered that the family had moved out, and someone (or someones?) else had moved in a few days ago, and he hadn’t bothered to meet them. 

Ludwig didn’t note much about the person pushing the very definitely motorized lawnmower (other than the fact that they were wearing a dark red jacket) before he’d shut the window and pulled back inside, stalking over to his dresser to grab a shirt (he was already wearing sweatpants). 

His usual insistence of appearing completely put-together would have to be sacrificed at the moment, because he couldn’t let the roaring noise of that lawnmower to go on a second longer than it had to (and afterwards he wanted to try to catch another couple hours of sleep). 

Pulling on a regular white t-shirt that he used for jogging or hitting the gym (it also had the advantage of being tight-fitting, showing off his muscles, which tended to intimidate people) and grabbing a pair of black socks, Ludwig stomped to his door, quickly putting on the socks and his black running shoes and stepping outside. 

On the short walk over to where the person in the red sweatshirt was mowing their lawn, noise-canceling headphones over their ears, Ludwig reflected on just how much he hated lawns. 

Unless you had children who need a space to play and run around in, lawns were a complete and utter waste of space. They served no other functional use. He didn’t understand why so many people prided themselves in the manicured lawns they never used. 

Lawns weren’t even aesthetically pleasing. Ludwig didn’t understand it. 

The first thing he’d done after moving into his house and setting up his furniture was to tear out his lawn, plant a garden, and build a wooden fence around it to keep the deer out. 

Gardens were both aesthetically pleasing and had a functional use. Ludwig used his, both in the front and in the back of his house, to grow fruits, vegetables, and herbs for his table (including the tomatoes that Feliciano and his brother loved so much), which also saved him money, as he then didn’t need to buy as much fresh produce from the store. 

He’d also set up a drip irrigation system that watered automatically in the early mornings, which saved water and meant he didn’t have to worry about watering himself unless he noticed certain plants weren’t getting enough. He just had to pull weeds, spread mulch and fertilizer when needed, remove any dead vegetation or diseased parts of plants, set up shade covers when it got hot, set up plant supports, harvest the fruits and vegetables as soon as they ripened, and disinfect his tools. 

Ludwig didn’t understand why more people didn’t have gardens. 

Exiting his gate and closing it behind him, Ludwig strode over to where his neighbor was mowing their front lawn, setting himself in their path on the grass, his arms crossed over his chest. 

He knew he probably shouldn’t be glaring as hard as he was and make a terrible impression on his new neighbor, but he was tired and irritable and it was _eight on a Sunday morning and this person was mowing their lawn._

His ears were ringing with the noise by the time the man—he could see that the person pushing the lawnmower was a man now—stopped the lawnmower in front of him, turning it off, removing his headphones and looking up at him with a grin (iPod paused and tucked away into a jacket pocket, the words “Tim Bendzko” and “Ich Kann Alles Sehen” and “Wenn Worte meine Sprache wären” flashing across the screen). 

The man was a few inches shorter than Ludwig’s six-foot-two, maybe around five-foot-ten. He was lean, pale, sharp-featured, obviously young but his hair was white. The irises of his eyes were red, and made Ludwig pause. 

“You must be Ludwig, hm?” the man grinned with a mouth that looked like the only kind of smile it could manage was smirkish, his voice sounding like it was designed for throwing taunts and insults. “I was told about you.” He offered a hand, still smirking. “My name is Gilbert. Gilbert Beilschmidt.” 

He said his name like he expected Ludwig to recognize it. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Ludwig demanded furiously, uncrossing his arms but ignoring the offered handshake, his fists clenched at his sides. “It’s eight in the morning on a Sunday. This is not the time for lawn mowing.” 

Gilbert’s red eyes widened slightly and his smirk disappeared for a second, only for his eyes to relax a second later, a white eyebrow lifting, smirk once again gracing his features. “What, too early for you, Mr. I-go-on-runs-at-5:30-in-the-morning?” 

Ludwig growled. “Sunday is the one day I sleep in.” 

“Really?” that white eyebrow raised higher, the smirk growing. “How lazy of you. And here I thought you were supposed to be German.” 

Glaring, Ludwig stepped closer, but Gilbert stepped out from behind the lawnmower and stepped closer as well, holding Ludwig’s gaze, flaunting his unnerving red eyes the same way Ludwig was flaunting his daunting strength. 

Ludwig suddenly had the mental image of alien scientists watching them and taking notes on human male showboating behaviors, and felt rather ridiculous. 

He tried to ignore the feeling, but the alien scientists were still there, so he mentally punched them in their faces. 

“I’m not the only one who likes to have peaceful Sundays,” Ludwig told his new neighbor calmly (belying the fact that his mind was a mess), “even if I’m apparently the only one willing to get out of bed to tell you so. Please mow your lawn, which serves absolutely no function, either at 09:00 or later on Sunday, or at 08:00 on a different day.

“You should know, after all, that the law prohibits loud noises in this residential area before 09:00 on weekends and public holidays, and you should respect that law.” Ludwig let a smirk curl his own lips, having heard the Germanic accent in Gilbert’s tone. “And here I thought you were German.” 

Gilbert laughed, then, a loud and grating _“Kesese!”_ that almost had Ludwig backing up a step. 

He didn’t, though, and it was Gilbert who took the step back, glancing at his watch. 

“Well, what do you know,” he said, looking up and smirking, showing Ludwig the time. 

08:18

“If you move fast then you can catch about forty more minutes of sleep before I turn on the lawnmower again,” Gilbert said, a devilish glint in his red eyes. “You’ve won yourself that much.” 

Ludwig met his neighbor’s gaze coolly. “Thank you,” he said, and turned to leave, feeling Gilbert’s eyes on him the entire way back. 

If he shivered, it was only because he finally realized that it was cold. 

He didn’t try to fall back asleep. He was already too awake (he’d never be able to rest with his mind in its current state).

* * *

The next Sunday, he was woken up at 09:00 exactly by the sound of his neighbor’s lawnmower. 

At least he was punctual, Ludwig thought resignedly, getting out of bed to take a shower and start his day, over an hour earlier than he wanted to. It wasn’t like he could complain, after all, no matter how tired he was. There wasn’t any reasonable way he could ask Gilbert to mow the lawn at another day or time. And Gilbert did not seem like one who would easily back down. 

Maybe he should just try to get some more sleep during the rest of the week. 

(If only his brain didn’t keep him up thinking about every little thing, distracting himself from what he really didn’t want to think about by making lists in his head of what he needed to get done the next day, every possible mistake he could have made in his coding, what something confusing either Feliciano or Kiku had said could possibly mean, what he needed to say in the next meeting at work, what he could have said better in the last one, whether there was any way aside of yelling to get his coworkers to focus and keep the meeting on track, whether he’d gone a little too far with the yelling, what he needed to buy the next time he went to the store, what he’d learned in the last chapter of the book he was reading, how he could apply that to his job, why the hell Gilbert insisted on mowing his lawn as early as was legal on Sunday mornings.) 

It wasn’t until the next Saturday when Feliciano and Feliciano and Kiku were at his house and praising the Forest Berry Tiramisu he’d made that Ludwig had an idea. 

Which just left the question of what cake to make. Ludwig considered making a Rehruecken Cake, since he had a hunch that Gilbert was from East Germany, but Ludwig wasn’t a hundred percent sure, and Ludwig also wanted to win over Gilbert’s housemates, so Ludwig wanted to bake a cake that would appeal to almost anyone.

(Ludwig had learned that Gilbert was renting the house along with his two friends, Francis and Antonio, since apparently none of them made enough to own their own place. “We’re those total cliché college graduates that can’t find a job in our majors,” Gilbert had laughed. He’d pointed succession to himself, Antonio, and Francis, saying, “So now we’re a bartender, a barista, and a waiter,” and then burst out laughing at the expression on Ludwig’s face while Antonio grinned and Francis smiled and winked, leaving Ludwig feeling lost and wondering how they were so happy.) 

Ludwig settled on making a Black Forest Cake, as it was one of Germany’s most famous cake creations, known all around the world. So the Spaniard and the Frenchman would both likely know it as well. Made with sour cherries, whipped cream, and a chocolate cake base, one couldn’t really go wrong with a Black Forest Cake. 

That Sunday, after being woken up at 09:00 by the roaring of Gilbert’s lawnmower, Ludwig showered, dressed, made himself a quick breakfast, and then set about baking the cake, singing to himself lowly as he worked.

(There was something beautifully precise about baking. Preheating the oven to exact degrees, measuring out the exact portions of ingredients, mixing them together in a precise fashion; following the recipe exactly. Everything was already figured out; all Ludwig had to do was follow instructions. He found it incredibly calming. Relaxing, even. When he was baking, he didn’t have to think about anything but baking; there were no worries, no doubts, no uncertainties, no memories or messes that were impossible to clean.) 

A few hours later, the cake completed (decorated with whipped cream, pitted cherries, and chocolate shavings, exactly like the picture in the recipe book) and left to cool for an hour, the kitchen cleaned till it was once again spotless, showing no sign of the baking process, Ludwig cut the cake into six even slices, preparing three of them to take over to his neighbors. 

He arranged the pieces on a white ceramic plate (to contrast with the dark chocolate shavings all over the top and sides and the dark chocolate cake batter, to make white of the whipped cream and the red of the cherries stand out layered in the center and decorating the of the cake on the wide edge—Kiku’s idea, explained when he’d photographed the last Black Forest Cake Ludwig had made), placing a clear glass cover over it (so one could see exactly what it was—Ludwig’s idea; he liked practicality). 

Ducking into the bathroom to make sure his hair was still slicked back properly, Ludwig took a moment to adjust his black t-shirt that had ridden up slightly, frowning as he saw that there was some flour on his green trousers, carefully brushing it off. He made a mental note to clean the bathroom floor later, before amending the note, figuring that if he was going to clean the bathroom floor then he might as well clean the entire bathroom while he was at it. 

Then he washed his hands and walked back to his kitchen, eying the three pieces of cake under the glass cover as he considered how he was supposed to deliver it, what he was supposed to say. 

He sighed, before walking to his study and grabbing a pen, writing out a quick message on a post-it note, pulling it from the pad and walking back to the kitchen to stick it to the glass, smooth the top to make sure it wouldn’t come off on the walk over. 

He stood back to inspect his work. The post-it note read plainly: 

_I made Black Forest Cake._  
Consider this penance for not  
providing you a moving-in gift.  
Let me know how you like it,  
and if you’d be interested in  
more of my baking in the  
future. -Ludwig 

Nodding to himself, Ludwig walked to his door to put on his shoes, before returning to the kitchen table and carefully picking up the plate, preparing to deliver it. 

The clock read 14:42.

He spent the duration of the short walk to his neighbors’ front door trying to ignore the doubts that were needling at him like bugs in flawed coding that needed to be fixed. 

He was at the door far too quickly. Taking a deep breath, he transferred the plate to one hand, reaching out with the other to ring the doorbell. 

There was the sound of moving to the door, and Ludwig stared at the peephole in the wood when it didn’t open. 

Through the door he heard a muffled voice that sounded like Antonio, yelling, “Guess what, guys! Ludwig’s at the door!” 

“Gilbert’s crush?” came what sounded like Francis’s voice. “Ah, let me greet him!” 

There was the sound of more feet, and then Gilbert’s voice saying, “He is not my crush! And no way are you greeting him, you creep!” 

By the time Gilbert pulled open the door, giving him a smirk, Ludwig’s eyebrows had made an admirable advancement towards his hairline. 

_“Guten Nachmittag_ , Ludwig,” Gilbert drawled, unperturbed and seemingly bored, before his red eyes landed on the plate in Ludwig’s hands, lighting up in interest. “Oh hey, what’s that?” 

“Here,” Ludwig said, pushing the plate into Gilbert’s surprised hands, careful not to let the glass cover rattle. He could feel his face heating up. “Share with your friends.” 

Then he turned and left (too nervous to have even noted that Gilbert was wearing his shirt inside-out and his pants were wrinkled from their time crumpled on the floor, all hastily pulled on in his rush to get to the door, or that his hair was wet from just getting out of the shower). Behind him, Antonio’s excited voice was audible saying, _“Dios mío_ , did he just give us cake?! How _simpático!_ ” 

When Ludwig got back inside, leaning against the door and heaving a sigh, the clock read 14:44. 

How that entire ordeal had been only two minutes, he had no idea.

* * *

It was 06:29 the next morning, and Ludwig was just returning from his hour-long run when he found Gilbert leaning against his front door, waiting for him, a smirk playing on his lips.

“You always return at 6:30,” Gilbert said, red eyes examining his nails. His eyebrows and even his eyelashes were white. “You’re very predictable, you know. It would be laughably easy for an assassin to kill you.” 

Ludwig was panting slightly, sweat dripping down his face and sticking his white shirt to his skin. He wiped the water from his brow. “If an assassin really wanted to kill me, I think they’d be able to do so even if I had an irregular schedule.” 

Ludwig paused, his eyebrows furrowing. “Why would an assassin want to kill me?” 

Gilbert was looking at him in amusement. “You’re right,” he said, smirkish grin growing. “They wouldn’t kill you. They’d just kidnap you and make you bake for them.” 

“I don’t think they’d be an assassin if they did kidnappings,” Ludwig muttered, before the rest of what Gilbert said caught up to him. His eyes widened slightly as he met his neighbor’s unusual red gaze. “So. You liked the Black Forest Cake, then?” He wiped more sweat from his face. It was dripping down his neck. 

Those unusual red eyes glittered. “Francis and Antonio liked it so much they mercilessly shoved me outside into this cold morning air without a coat to tell you so,” he said, making an encompassing gesture to their situation. “They said I have to tell you that we are definitely interested in more of your baking, or else they’d leave me outside to sleep in the yard like a dog.” 

Ludwig did his best to keep the feeling of triumph off his face (and his best meant that the triumph didn’t show at all). 

“Tell them that I’ll bake you more desserts,” he said, not missing the way that Gilbert’s red eyes lit up at the proclamation, “on one condition.” 

“Oh?” Gilbert said, leaning back against Ludwig’s front door, a smirk still curling his lips, crossing his arms over his chest (likely for warmth, seeing as he was only wearing gray skinny jeans and a black tank-top, his pale, defined arms and shoulders bare, and it was chilly out). “And what would that condition be?” 

Ludwig felt a smirk curling his lips, and Gilbert raised a white eyebrow. 

“You have to mow your lawn at legal on hours on any day but Sunday,” he said, and Gilbert burst out laughing. 

Ludwig wiped away more sweat as he watched the white-haired man double over, clutching his sides, his breaths coming in harsh kesese’s. 

He didn’t think he’d ever before heard anyone with a laugh like that. 

“You play dirty, Ludwig,” Gilbert said when his laughing petered out and he straightened, looking at him with a grin. His eyes traveled over Ludwig’s chest, and Ludwig suddenly felt very self-conscious of the white material sticking to his skin with sweat. “I like it.” 

Ludwig swallowed, and Gilbert’s red eyes followed a drop of sweat down his throat. He shivered as the crisp, cool morning air started once again to chill him, the heat from his run fading.

“You didn’t react satisfactorily to intimidation, so I had to try something else,” Ludwig mumbled, wiping at the sweat that was starting to really annoy him. “I’m glad that bribery appears to garner a more favorable reaction.” 

Gilbert laughed again. “Very well,” he said, pushing himself off Ludwig’s front door, hands in his jean pockets. “I’ll mow my lawn some other morning, just so you can have your lazy Sunday and feel amiable enough to bake us dessert.” His eyes glittered, and he smirked, adding, “Every weekend.”

“Fair enough,” Ludwig shrugged. He enjoyed baking anyway, and he could never eat all of it himself. 

Gilbert nodded, seemingly satisfied, and brushed by, continuing down the walk through Ludwig’s garden, towards his gate, tomato plants lining the stone path on either side (the plants with their green fruits that were just starting to redden, still orange, and had caused Feliciano to cry with happiness when he’d seen them two days before). 

But Ludwig wasn’t looking at the tomatoes, his eyes on the stitched designs on the back pockets of Gilbert’s jeans, dark against the light gray material. He found himself staring at the way Gilbert’s hips were swaying, noting that that wasn’t the most efficient way to walk. 

Gilbert stopped with the gate half-open, throwing him a smirk over his shoulder, before sauntering out, closing the gate behind him, and Ludwig’s gaze was left on wood starting to darken from weather exposure, tomatoes starting to ripen with the warming temperatures of spring. 

It was still cold in the morning, though, and Ludwig shivered from the chill of sweat evaporating from his skin and quickly entered his house. He needed a shower.

* * *

It was 05:43 on Tuesday morning and Ludwig was at the gym, wiping the sweat from his neck with a hand towel as he got ready to use the bench press when a voice that sounded just shy of mocking said, “Need a spotter, Ludwig?” 

Ludwig turned to see Gilbert standing there in white gym shorts and a black tank-top, grinning at him. 

“Gilbert,” Ludwig greeted, surprised. “What are you doing here?” 

The other man shrugged, though his lips were still quirked, red eyes glittering. “Being awesome. I had the day shift at the bar so I would hit the gym in the evenings after work, but a friend working a later shift begged me to switch with him, so I’m working the evenings now. So I figured I needed to start hitting the gym in the morning.” 

He gestured to the bench press, red eyes still alight. “I’ll spot for you if you’ll spot for me.” 

Ludwig narrowed his eyes, feeling like there was something mischievous in the tilt of Gilbert’s lips, the line of his neck, the twitch of his fingers, but decided it would do neither of them harm and nodded, lying down on the bench and grasping the barbell with both hands, waiting for Gilbert to get into position before lifting the weight towards the ceiling. 

(When it was Gilbert’s turn to lift, Ludwig found himself watching the way the lean, defined muscles of his arms strained, the way his face looked when he was concentrating, the mischief fallen away.) 

The next morning he ran into Gilbert while jogging, and they ran next to each other for a time. There was no talking, just running and breathing, though Gilbert huffed a small laugh when the mourning doves on the telephone wire above their heads startled and flew away, murmuring in complaint. 

(By the time they were done, Gilbert’s bangs were stuck to his forehead with sweat, his tank-top plastered to his defined pectorals and six-pack, pale skin glistening, and Ludwig found himself staring, realizing that he must look much the same and feeling suddenly embarrassed.) 

(When he looked away, Gilbert just smirked and kept staring, and Ludwig made a hasty excuse and retreated into his house, sure his cheeks were aflame, such that when he glanced in the mirror he half expected his blond eyebrows to have been burned black like Feliciano always teased him they would be.)

* * *

There was something beautiful about washing windows, Ludwig thought.

The windows always looked fine even before he started. He could see what was outside. But then, when he prepared to clean the window, stepping closer, he could see all the dirt that had built up, so insidiously that he hadn’t noticed. 

It made him feel tainted and used, when he noticed that his windows were dirty. Like he’d been violated, thinking that the light that fell onto his hardwood floor was clean and pure, only to see the flecks of dirt that caused speckled shadows that smudged the lines of the wood, a film of grime that deadened the colors, sapping the interior of his house of vitality in a way that bothered him all the more because it did not make logical sense. He hated the imperfection and the dullness that reminded him of his life before he was ever introduced to the concept of being alive rather than just living. 

So he stood outside with the sunlight warm on his back and obscured the view with warm, soapy water (the less suds, the better), drawn over the glass with the long cloth head of a strip applicator, till the window was frosted over with (warm) white, the strokes of the strip applicator (making the glass look like it had been covered in a giant’s fingerprint, Feliciano had once cheerfully pointed out, and Ludwig had looked at the window and wondered at where he saw that). 

But it was the wiping away of the soap that was truly beautiful (Ludwig’s concept of beauty was a plain one). Starting at the top left, pulling the squeegee over the soap pane in a reverse-S pattern, wiping the squeegee’s blade clean with a lint-free rag at the end of each stroke, his heart feeling lighter with each stretch of transparent glass that was revealed, so clean one could walk into it thinking that nothing was there if one weren’t paying attention (and Feliciano was often not paying attention). 

It was incredibly satisfying to remove the remaining water at the edges of the glass with a damp, wrung-dry chamois, soaking up the wetness without leaving streaks and then drying the windowsill with a rag. It left him breathing easier. 

(“You panic whenever anything is dirty,” Kiku had once noted, a question of ‘why?’ lingering unsaid in his tone. Ludwig had shrugged, and tried not to think of the house he’d grown up in and what it felt like to have no control over his life.) 

But it was when he was back inside the house that the beauty really struck him, looking out through the windows at the organized planter boxes of his garden, perfect squares of functionality (Ludwig was not the one to notice that the planter boxes were filled with so many different greens, the magenta of rhubarb, the subdued green tongues of the arugula, the dark green and purple of romaine lettuce, the orange flowers of the pumpkin, the feathery leaves of the carrot, the climbing tomatoes clinging to their wire structures; the flowering fruit trees lining the fence (white for lemon, thin and star-shaped; white for apple, five white petals overlapping; light pink for the ornamental plum, punctuated by bits of darkness with the beginnings of dark maroon leaves). 

The light was bright, pure as a chaste kiss, gracing his house with the vivacity of some place loved and lived in (a feeling multiplied a hundred times over whenever Feliciano was over, flopping on the chestnut coach or matching loveseat, hugging one of the panda pillows that Kiku had given him when he’d first moved there, or hanging a new colorful art piece on the warm beige walls, or smiling and gently poking the bamboo palm in its pot on the coffee table or the spider plant and golden pothos hanging in the kitchen, or standing at one of the cabinets next to the flatscreen TV filled with Italian comedies and Japanese horror films. Feliciano and Kiku had brought all the warmth and life to Ludwig’s house). 

Ludwig didn’t think he ever felt so warm and clean as when he’d just washed the windows. 

Nothing compared to it, aside from maybe washing mirrors. Though while washing the windows let him see the beauty around him, washing the mirrors forced him to look at himself, and he was never too happy with what he saw. He preferred his reflection in store windows, Feliciano and Kiku beside him, smiling, their eyes alight with a delight that Ludwig could never quite find for himself. 

He didn’t look as stern or dull with them beside him as he did alone. Cleaning the mirrors, brushing his teeth, combing and slicking back his hair, straightening his tie—flat blue eyes in a stern face, blond hair he preferred out of the way, off his neck, out of his eyes that looked at the world like a math problem. 

_Alpha may be standing over point (-6, 2, 0), but his shoulder is 2 meters above the ground, at point (-6, 2, 2), so this is the starting point for the vector calculation._

“What color is a mirror?” Feliciano had once asked him, humming as he lay on Ludwig’s couch, humming happily, arms behind his head. 

Ludwig had paused, frowning, his mind going over the structure of mirrors and how they worked, the layers of paint behind the extremely thin, extremely smooth piece of metal behind the glass. Most objects absorbed some colors and reflected others, which was why people had the perception of the color properties of things: when light hit a banana, it absorbed every color but yellow, which it reflected, making the banana appear yellow. 

_The vector to his target is produced by subtracting the droid’s position—point B at (7, 5, 10)—from the starting point A at (-6, 2, 2), giving us a target vector of (13, 3, 8)._

Mirrors worked because they reflected every color in the visible spectrum, which they did because they were smooth on a microscopic level, which was why glass and calm bodies of dark water also produced specular reflections. If a strong gust of wind rippled the water, making the surface uneven, the reflection became diffuse and distorted. 

So what color was a mirror? 

Normalizing the vector produces a heading vector that can be used in time-based movement.

“A mirror is all colors,” Ludwig said finally, and Feliciano beamed at him. 

“Ludwig, you are so smart, ve~!” Feliciano cried, getting up off the couch and running over to hug him, chattering happily about how he used to think that mirrors were silver, but then he was trying to draw one and really looked at it and saw that the mirror wasn’t actually silver, it only felt that way, but it was just reflecting all the other colors, and that that was the secret to painting mirrors because mirrors were a study in color, and Ludwig listened patiently.

Ludwig found himself smiling slightly in the mirror at the memory of the Italian’s exuberance, and he quickly wiped the smile from his face with the same methodical way he was wiping the dust and water marks from the mirror. 

He’d just stepped back, frowning at his reflection that was frowning back at him, when he heard the doorbell ring, watching surprise widen the eyes of his mirror image before its frown deepened. 

It had been a couple years since anybody had rung Ludwig’s doorbell (ever since he’d put up his gate and equipped it with a lock). Feliciano just waltzed in with the key that Ludwig had been obliged to provide him with, sing-songing, _“I’m hooooome, Ludwig!”_ Kiku had a key, but he always called before he came over, so Ludwig would just unlock both the gate and the door. Even then, Kiku always knocked. 

Ludwig knew that he hadn’t left the gate unlocked. Kiku hadn’t called, and it obviously wasn’t Feliciano. 

The doorbell rang again, and Ludwig strode out of the bathroom through the hall to his front door, opening it roughly with angry words already forming on his tongue, but when he saw who it was he stopped and just stared. 

_“Hallo,”_ Gilbert grinned, wiggling his fingers in a wave. There was dirt on his hands and the knees of his blue jeans. He was wearing the same red sweater he’d been wearing on the day Ludwig first met him. 

Ludwig suddenly remembered that there was a large maple tree at the edge of his neighbors’ lawn, with branches that stretched over his own. 

“You jumped my fence,” Ludwig stated, shock making his voice flat. 

Gilbert grinned at him, looking almost sheepish. It was still something of a smirk, though. “Your gate was locked.” He lifted a white eyebrow. “You just paranoid, or what?” 

Ludwig closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead. “That’s to keep solicitors out,” he mumbled. “It’s more for their sakes than my own.” 

“Oh?” Gilbert’s voice was curious. 

“The last solicitor I’d had stuttered terribly and wet his pants out of abject terror,” Ludwig muttered, opening his eyes and watching the other man’s face to see if he’d believe it. “The one before that turned and hurried away without saying anything, only to trip on a garden hose I’d left lying around carelessly, scraping his hands and tearing his pants. The one before that had gone white as soon as I’d opened the door and then hurriedly excused himself and left.” 

Gilbert blinked, and then he narrowed his eyes, accusing, “Okay, you’re totally bullshitting me. There’s no way you’d leave a garden hose lying around carelessly.” 

Ludwig found his lips twitching upwards. “Believe whatever you want,” he shrugged, leaning against his doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest. “So. Why did you jump my fence and come over to ring my doorbell at,” he glanced the watch on his left wrist, “15:26 on Sunday?” 

Gilbert pouted at him. His lips weren’t made for it, still resembling a smirk at the corners, the light in his red eyes till far too smug. “Didn’t you notice that I didn’t wake you up at 9:00 this morning with the lawnmower? I mowed the lawn on Wednesday, when you were off at work. So I’ve come to collect my just dessert.” He wiggled his white eyebrows, breaking out in a grin. 

Ludwig blinked at him. He’d never met anyone like this man before, and he wondered for a moment if he was going insane, a character from one of Kiku’s manga, come to life in a world where he couldn’t possibly actually exist. 

The white hair. The ever-present smirk. The perfect body. The red eyes that always seemed to know something that nobody else was aware of. 

“Don’t tell me you forgot,” Gilbert said lowly, a pitch to his voice that was either threatening or sultry, but Ludwig would be the last person to be able to tell which one it actually was. The effect of either was much the same. 

Ludwig found himself looking away, cheeks heating up and hating how obvious it must be. (It was always obvious, with his complexion.) 

_“Kesese!”_ Gilbert was laughing. 

“I didn’t forget,” Ludwig muttered, moving from the doorway and stepping inside, silently asking for Gilbert to follow him, nodding for him to take his shoes off at the door. “I was going to bring it over in a bit.” 

Gilbert followed him to the kitchen, but Ludwig paused in the doorway, blocking his view. 

“Uh,” Ludwig said, turning around, scratching his neck and smiling sheepishly at him. “It’s not quite done yet, actually. I was cleaning the house while I left it to cool, and I still need to put on the topping…” 

Gilbert raised one of those white eyebrows at him. 

“Uh,” Ludwig said again, shifting his weight uneasily. “Would you mind… waiting in the living room for me to finish? I don’t like people to see my unfinished work.” He cleared his throat, looking away. “You can turn on the TV, if you want. Or there’s books on the book shelf… most of them are about programming, but I think I might have ended up with a few of my friend’s mangas…” 

When he looked at the man again, Gilbert was smirking (there was always a smirk on those lips). 

“I suppose the awesome me can wait for a little while,” Gilbert drawled, and Ludwig wondered at his word choice. He gestured down the hall. “The living room is that way, I take it?” 

_“Ja,”_ Ludwig said, and Gilbert laughed at him before strolling down the hall, disappearing into the doorway that led to the living room. 

Relaxing slightly, Ludwig slipped into his kitchen, the cake cooled and waiting for him on the counter. 

He carefully chopped chocolate and dissolved it with coconut oil in a double boiler over warm water. He coated the cake in the glaze, before sticking the slivered almonds evenly spaced in the cake so that it could be cut into 18 pieces. 

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, Ludwig walked to the living room, where he found Gilbert sitting on the couch with the first volume of Tokyo Ghoul in his hands, looking rather immersed. 

Ludwig felt his lips quirk. “Careful with that one,” he warned, and Gilbert looked up at him, blinking those red eyes. For a moment, his face was open and earnest, curious, confused. He looked younger. 

Ludwig suddenly wondered if Gilbert without a smirk on his lips felt as vulnerable as Ludwig felt without his hair slicked back. 

“My friend was in something of a daze for a few days after reading that series,” Ludwig explained. “I’m pretty sure he left them here in the hope that they’d stop haunting him if he wasn’t constantly looking at them.” 

The smirk was back, then, the mischievous glitter back in those red eyes. “Yeah,” Gilbert said, carefully closing the manga, “it looked like it was going to get pretty dark. Ghouls that have to survive by eating humans? There’s no way a story like this wouldn’t become fucked-up.” 

“I haven’t read it,” Ludwig shrugged. He scratched at his neck, unable to hold the gaze of those red eyes (stunning). “I, uh, did finish the cake, though.” 

Gilbert’s eyes lit up, but his movements were careful and controlled as he put the manga down on the coffee table, standing and stretching, his back popping. 

“Lead the way, oh fearless leader,” Gilbert said with a grin, and Ludwig fought the urge to roll his eyes, turning and walking to the kitchen, the soft padding of Gilbert’s socked feet behind him. 

They entered the kitchen, and Ludwig gestured to the Rehruecken Cake, his nerves attacking him full force at the way Gilbert stared at the dessert. 

“I, uh,” Ludwig’s hand was at the bag of his neck, tugging at the slicked-back strands of hair. “It’s a Rehruecken Cake. I just kind of guessed that you were East German, and would appreciate that. But, uh,” he could feel himself starting to panic as Gilbert didn’t say a word, didn’t move. “I’m sorry if I was wrong. And if you don’t know what that is. Or if I offended you in some way. It was stupid of me to assume. I should have asked. I—”

His nervous rambling was cut off, and it took Ludwig a moment to realize it was by warm lips on his own, and that warm arms had snaked around his neck, holding him there. 

Ludwig was frozen, eyes wide open (Gilbert’s eyes were closed, white eyelashes on pale cheeks). 

Just when Ludwig had closed his eyes and started to relax into the kiss, hands coming up to flutter at Gilbert’s lithe waist, the other man pulled back, grinning up at him. 

Ludwig had never seen eyes so alight (red, red like fire). 

“If I were a ghoul, I would eat you,” Gilbert proclaimed. 

“I haven’t read that series,” Ludwig said automatically, before the meaning of the statement hitting him a moment later and left him breathless. 

“I’m sure you heard enough about it from your friend,” Gilbert shrugged, smirking like he knew he was right (he was). 

“If you were a ghoul,” Ludwig said, his breath trickling back into his lungs, “I would be the only thing edible to you in my house. And you wouldn’t be able to eat the Rehruecken Cake I baked for you.” 

“That would be a shame,” Gilbert agreed, fingers wound in the hair at the back of Ludwig’s neck. He was grinning. “Good thing I’m not a ghoul, huh?” 

“Considering that it doesn’t sound like I’d survive if you were a ghoul,” Ludwig murmured, unable to meet those red eyes, his heart pounding in his chest, “yes, I’d say that it is a good thing.” 

Gilbert laughed ( _“Kesese!”_ ) and kissed him again. 

That time, Ludwig actually kissed him back (he’d never kissed anyone before, and he was sure his attempts to reciprocate were incredibly clumsy—Gilbert’s kissing felt so practiced—but it came easier than he would have expected, and Gilbert didn’t seem to mind), his hands finally settling on the other man’s hips, pulling him closer. 

_How is this happening?_ Ludwig wondered, as Gilbert deepened the kiss. _You’re not real._

When they pulled away again, they were both panting for breath, and Gilbert looked triumphant. 

_You shouldn’t be real,_ Ludwig thought, thumb tracing over the other man’s hip through his jacket, his lips swollen slightly from kissing.

He cleared his throat, feeling suddenly very awkward, realizing he had no idea how he’d become trapped in the ellipse of Gilbert’s arms (a planet trapped in orbit, and gravity didn’t want him to leave; he was falling farther and farther towards the sun). 

“I’m glad you’re happy about the cake,” he muttered, eyes down (the sunlight was too bright; too bright), only to look back up when Gilbert started laughing incredulously. 

“You…!” was all Gilbert managed, before peals of laughter caused him to lurch forward and cling to Ludwig, face in the larger man’s chest, leaving Ludwig no choice but to hold him up, feeling lost and confused (what was funny about suddenly finding yourself stranded in space?). 

When Gilbert’s laughter finally stopped, he raised his head, grinning up at him (those lips were always smirking). “Be my boyfriend,” he said, more statement than question. 

Ludwig looked down at him, brow furrowed. His hands were resting uncertainly on the other man’s hips. 

“I don’t understand,” he said honestly, feeling his cheeks heat up. “I don’t… why would you…?” He ducked his head, cheeks on fire. “I don’t have much experience with this kind of thing. And you… I…” his fingers were burning where they rested on Gilbert’s hips. “We don’t even know anything about each other.” 

_If I say yes, what will that mean for you?_ he wondered, and tried not to breath. (It might make Gilbert’s life worse.) _If I say yes, what will that mean for me?_ he wondered, and felt slightly dizzy. (It might make his life better.) 

There was a cool hand on his cheek. “I know that I like you, Ludwig,” Gilbert murmured, and Ludwig didn’t look, but the man was probably still smirking (there was the smug lilt of a smirk in his voice; those lips were always smirking). “I know that you like the awesome me. And I know that the awesome me wants to know more about you and your no doubt very mysterious and fascinating past.” 

(Again, Ludwig wondered at the man’s word choice.)

A kiss was pressed to his jaw, and he shivered. “You have to start somewhere,” was murmured against his skin. 

Gilbert’s breath was warm, and his fingers mussed slicked-back hair, working out the crunchy stiffness. The aroma of chocolate and cake permeated the air. “And I’d say this is a pretty good place to start.” 

“I don’t know,” Ludwig murmured, feeling more than seeing Gilbert pull back to look at him. Ludwig allowed himself to smile slightly. “I think it would be a better start if we were eating cake.”

 _“Kesese!”_ Gilbert laughed (it was quickly becoming Ludwig’s favorite sound). “I _like_ the way you think, Ludwig.”

* * *

Gilbert took a bite of the cake (pale lips dragging over silver prongs) and gave a scandalous moan, eyes fluttering closed (even his eyelashes were white). 

He swallowed, pink tongue flicking out over pale lips, wiping away dark traces of chocolate. He opened his eyes, then (nobody real should have irises so red), and said, “I am so glad I’m not a ghoul,” and his voice was filled with vehemence. 

And Ludwig felt like maybe he’d be able to fall asleep without utterly exhausting himself, like maybe he wouldn’t need to stay up trying to get his mind as clean and organized as his garden, his workspace, his house (everything in its own little box, compartmentalized, labeled and tucked away; dirt swept under the ornate rugs and into dark corners in lieu of the absent trash bin, hiding all the things he wished he could forget, because otherwise it was distracting clutter, clutter, _clutter_ , and everything was covered in _grime_ , and the light didn’t filter right through the windows). 

When Ludwig chuckled, Gilbert’s eyes lit up (red was quickly becoming Ludwig’s new favorite color), and Ludwig felt warmth spread from his chest all the way down to his toes, making them curl against the cold tile floor.

Gilbert grinned as he started recounting how his “awesome self” and his two “not-as-awesome” best friends had come to rent the house next door, and Ludwig found himself thinking that maybe, just maybe, he’d found something that could be worth coming home to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rehruecken Cake ("Sweet Venison" Cake) is an East German chocolate frosted cake favorite, bristling with almonds to look like a wild deer hide.
> 
> "Sweet Venison" is so popular in East Germany that you can even buy baking pans specifically for this cake that are molded with ridges imitating transverse ribs. If you pounce upon a cake made in one of these pans, and you'll find the hind of this beast bristling with spikey almonds.
> 
> * * *
> 
> The two italicized sections about programming were borrowed from the book _Beginning Game Development with Python and Pygame: From Novice to Professional_ by Will McGugan.
> 
> * * *
> 
> ALSO, if anyone wants to know what the hell is going on in Gilbert's head in this chapter, I highly suggest you go listen to "Ich Kann Alles Sehen" by Tim Bendzko, and that, if you don't know German, you look up the English translation of the lyrics; ALL WILL SUDDENLY BE MADE CLEAR.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Also a note on the scene where Gilbert and Ludwig were ribbing each other about being German:
> 
> Ludwig ribbing Gilbert about not following the law is based off what I mentioned in the author notes of the Chapter 4, the Jaywalking AU, about Germans having "a legendary reputation for sticking to the rule book."
> 
> Gilbert ribbing Ludwig for sleeping in was lightly playing off the fact that Germans are generally thought of as being hardworkers, but this particular doesn't really have much basis in fact or make much sense since I'm pretty sure that Germany and other European countries actually value vacation and downtime, and that it's America where people are known to work all the time and not get vacations or days off. Gilbert was just giving Ludwig a hard time.


End file.
